371 Art in the Public Realm: Contemporary Issues (4 units)
Undergraduate course introducing the underpinnings of contemporary public art with artist profiles, case studies, public art projects, collaborative designers and architects all poised in the forefront of the public realm. Discussion sessions include student inquiry and critical dialogue surrounding contemporary public art issues. Discussions are augmented through site visits to Los Angeles public art projects and guest artist presentations.

549 Public Art Communication Management (2 units)
Readings and discussion of major modern and post-modern theorists are used as the foundation to explore methods of developing argument, position and ananlysis. An investigation of research methods, report and proposal presentation, grant writing, writing for press, and writing for the Web. Dawn Finley

550a Public Art in the Community (1 unit)
Explores issues facing community-based arts organizations. Using a non-profit organization as a practical site-based research model, students will be asked to provide solutions to questions facing a mid-sized organization through assignments which focus on aspects of programming and administration. Reading assignments and class time will place community-based artmaking in a socio-historical context and will explore the critical issues that artists working in this area face.

550b Public Art in the Community (1 unit)
A continuation of 550a. Students are required to take 550 a and b in sequence over a single academic year. Prerequisite: 550a.

561 Administration Survey (3 units)
Serves as an introduction to current thinking and 'best practices' in the field of public art. It will provide an overview of planning methods and policy development, permanent and temporary programs, artist selection processes, community involvement techniques, project management and evaluation criteria.

562 Administration and Program Development (3 units)
Students research and discuss the administration of private/public art agencies and their development through comparative case studies. Students then explore the development of individual program policy statements. Prerequisite: 561.

571 History Survey (3 units)
Provides students with an overview of the history of public art, predominantly in the United States, from 1900-1950 and 1950-present. Major initiatives, programs, artists and public art projects are discussed.
572 History (3 units)
Continued investigation of contemporary public art projects based upon case studies and the investigation of public art aesthetics and topics. Prerequisite: 571.

581 Forum (2 units)
Brings visiting artists and public art professionals into the classroom. The discussions explore the concurrence of public art, postmodernism, internet, feminism, multiculturalism, gay and lesbian rights and international democracy movements, boding well for a more inclusive view of art. How can we make the confluence into mass art and art of the every day? Traditional to experimental, guerrilla to sanctioned, decorative plop art to community-based completed projects are analyzed for their strategies and solutions: temporary and permanent, static, kinetic, or time based. 

585 Public Space, the Public Realm and Public Art (3 units)
Explores competing notions of what is considered the public sphere. We will also investigate the nature of the contemporary American built environment that surrounds public art. The class is multidisciplinary in nature, with a wide variety of subtopics, ranging from the role of the media in defining the public sphere, on notions of community and democracy, precedents for contemporary public art, concepts to consider in understanding public life such as the idea of the carnivalesque and some material on public art projects where issues of representing and communicating with the audience for public art has been an issue. The class is about the context of public art and some of the social and political issues involved, but is not a class about public art in and of itself.

590 Directed Research (1-12 units)
Allows the student to do work with a faculty member to produce an independent body of research or in preparation for the Master's Thesis. Maximum units determined by department.

591 Field Internship (1-2 units)
Supervised internship within the context of a public or private art agency. Internship should include administrative involvement with the community, artists, designers, professional agencies, and/or research.

594abz Master's Thesis (2/2/0 units)
Completion of a project or written thesis under the Public Art Studies Program thesis guidelines as adapted from the USC Graduate School. Credit on acceptance of thesis. Prerequisite: successful completion of all other requirements.