The Moral Right of Skateable Sculpture

The Moral Right of Skateable Sculpture will bring together academics, artists and skateboarders interested in the emergent field of ‘skateable’ sculpture.

In 1996, Vito Acconci, Stanley Saitowitz and Barbara Solomon’s Promenade Ribbon on San Francisco’s Embarcadero became a flashpoint for public space and skateboarding, sparking debate that led to the sculpture being ‘skate-stopped’. In response, at the 1997 ACSA European conference in Berlin, Joel Varland argued that prohibiting skateboarders from interacting with the work undermined the artists’ ‘moral right’. This is a legal term protecting an artist’s authorship over a work’s intended use. Since the sculpture’s conceptual intention was public interaction, Varland contended that restricting skateboarders breached this right, with debate over the Promenade Ribbon continuing to this day. Yet in the decades since, sculptures explicitly intended to be skated upon have proliferated across museums, biennials, skate festivals, and beyond, including at the Henry Moore Institute itself.

This symposium seeks to examine the recent history and contemporary moment of skateable sculpture. What new forms of artistic thinking, public interaction or critical response do these works engender, and what might it mean for an artwork to have the moral right to be skated upon?

This symposium is organised in collaboration with Dr Harry Meadley (Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University).

Topics and themes of discussion