Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of public art in the City of Westminster/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by SchroCat 07:53, 28 September 2014 [1].

List of public art in the City of Westminster

List of public art in the City of Westminster (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Ham (talk) 19:40, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For several years I have been creating this list of public artworks (very broadly defined) in the City of Westminster, the borough of London which includes the official centre, where that city's most important concentrations of memorials can be found. All the major works and the lion's share of the more obscure ones have been covered with citations, images, co-ordinates, notes and sometimes Commons categories, so I feel that the page meets the criterion of comprehensiveness. Only architectural sculptures have had to be excluded due to the sheer size of this list; for them there is a separate article. I eagerly look forward to your comments. Ham (talk) 19:40, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's an excellent list (I'm slowly working on some of the S/W outer London areas). I don't think it is comprehensive enough yet though (you've set yourself a tricky task with an area with as much public art as this). From a search on geograph I found various examples like this, this, etc. The first station I randomly checked on Art on the Underground had this. I don't think it is practical to expect comprehensive coverage, but where something has already been documented in a nice database like geograph I think it is practical to ask for everything there to be included. It's a horrible website to use but have you also checked the article against what's in the PMSA database?
Also you haven't put in any photos of murals on buildings. I'm no expert in copyright but the 1988 UK law explicitly grants an exemption for photographs of copyrighted buildings (including any fixed structure, and a part of a building or fixed structure). I can't see how something painted on to a building does not count as a part of that building even if it would count as a 2D graphic work if it was painted somewhere else instead. In the abscence of any knowledge of legal cases testing the exact dividing line I would say that we would be OK in using any images that are clearly of a 3D looking building but maybe not just attempts to reproduce the 2D artwork element of the mural. Has there been any discussion of this on wikipedia previously? JMiall₰ 18:27, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@JMiall: Thanks for replying and for the kind words‍—‌I was starting to worry that I might get no response! I know that there are more examples but haven't been able to find sources for them‍—‌for instance the sundial on Pickering Place you've noted has a few mentions on the web but there's no information on who made it or when. The FL criteria define comprehensiveness as "providing at least all of the major items and, where practical, a complete set of items", and in my opinion it wouldn't be practical to include anything for which there's no verifiable information. I wouldn't have thought that images on Geograph count as a source in these circumstances.
I would say that they do count as a source of the information that there is a piece of public art in that location if nothing else. For something that is a bit ambiguous about whether it is actually art or public I'd omit them but if it seems obviously public art then I'd include whatever information is available. JMiall₰ 10:24, 5 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Re your other examples: Tottenham Court Road station is in the borough of Camden, and I counted John Maine's work at Green Park station as architectural sculpture on the basis that it's carved into stone and incorporated in the fabric of the building, but it can be tricky deciding what fits that definition when it comes to contemporary art. It might be better to have it in the main list after all. I wasn't aware of the Art on the Underground site; I'll go through it to see if there are examples I have missed. The PMSA's database doesn't have any entries for the City of Westminster, or, at least, the works in Philip Ward-Jackson's 2011 book aren't on it (unlike those in his 2003 book on the City of London, despite both books being in the PMSA's Public Sculpture of Britain series).
Re copyright, I'm not sure what you mean by "copyrighted buildings"‍—‌isn't there Freedom of Panorama in the UK?‍—‌but your suggestion about showing murals in their 3D context sounds like a good idea. I might mention this issue later at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, to see if there has been past discussion on Wikipedia about it. Ham (talk) 09:49, 5 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There is freedom of panorama but that doesn't mean that buildings aren't copyrighted, just that taking photos of them doesn't infringe any copyright. JMiall₰ 10:24, 5 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see you reference one of the council's conservation area audits. They seem to have these for many conservation areas and some (eg St John's Wood) have decent lists for what the council regards as public art. Have you checked that their lists and yours match?
Also if you look at the map with all the coordinates there seem to be some suspiciously large gaps (St John's Wood is one). I know it's difficult to prove a negative but are you fairly sure there really isn't anything in these areas? This also shows a W/E error on the Norwegian War Memorial coord.
I would count listed benches as public art in the same vein as ornate drinking fountains etc. JMiall₰ 11:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Have you seen this list of mosaics? It has a Westminster section. I've no idea how public most of them are but there's a picture of the Marble arch mosaics here. There's also a sculpture which seems to be designed to be easily seen from the road, not sure if the land it is on is publicly accessable. JMiall₰ 22:03, 8 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@JMiall: Thanks for all these pointers‍—‌plenty of work for me to do! I've gone through all the conservation area audits now, identified the works to be added (the highest number is in St John's Wood) and started to add them. I think I can work out in most cases which works in the database are outdoors (this, for instance) and which are not. The sculpture at The Lancasters is worth including, provided that it's permanent (which looks likely). I'll call back here as soon as all those changes are made. Ham (talk) 07:21, 9 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@JMiall: I've now gone through the conservation area audits with a fine comb and left out only those works for which I can't see any trace on Google Maps or Street View, incorporated the suggestions you've made on the article talk page and here and restored the pics of murals and tube station interiors. Ham (talk) 11:37, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Good stuff. I've had another look through geograph for art in the NWish part of Westminster that seemed quite empty on the coordinates map. This is what I found: 1, 2, possibly the mural from 3 or is this the remains of old advertising?, possibly 4 but the image seems to be taken over a wall and looking on streetview they aren't particularly public murals, 5, 6, 7 (for the architectural list), 8, 9, 10 (too recent to be on streetview). I will search around for more. JMiall₰ 17:38, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Here's some more from geograph in the fairly empty southern bit of Westminster: 11 (still on streetview in June 2014), 12. It might be worth mentioning the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground at Chelsea College of Arts which seems to have an ongoing selection of works on display. Anyway given it wasn't that hard to find more works in these areas this makes me suspicious that there's lots more works in the rest of Westminster that aren't included either. A problem in an area with such a huge amount of art. JMiall₰ 18:24, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Fitzrovia Mural doesn't seem to be in Westminster. JMiall₰ 19:24, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@JMiall: I've added the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground, as well as [6], [9] and [10], as I've been able to find other online sources for them. I've also removed the Fitzrovia Mural. I'm still really apprehensive about citing sites like Geograph or Flickr as sources, which feels roughly on a par with citing Wikimedia Commons, another user-generated image upload site‍—‌not up to scratch for a featured list. If a work hasn't been written about elsewhere it does raise questions about its notability for inclusion; WP:LSC is a useful point of reference here. The beauty of Geograph is that the photos can be added to Commons anyway, and be there as an aide-mémoire until more information can be found about the individual works. Looking at a Commons category like this (which includes image [5]), it's clear that not every work there needs to be included in the list. I personally think the page currently meets the criteria for comprehensiveness and that any additions are an added bonus but not essential (though I will address the remaining suggestions on the talk page next). Not to be immodest, but the list does cover the topic more comprehensively than any book that currently exists!
Re the north-west and the south being under-represented, it's worth noting that "Whitehall to St James's" is considered a "monument saturation zone" by Westminster City Council, and I would expect the more residential areas to have less public art. Ham (talk) 13:16, 12 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem believing that this list is more comprehensive than any book. Hopefully you've been through all the major books on the topic making sure this is the case.

I've not reviewed a featured list before so may be applying too high a standard. My point of view is that I'm trying to review this list against a scope that has the possibility of being quite vague (What is art? What is public? What isn't architectural sculpture? What is permanent? etc) but against the criteria that the list should be of professional quality and attempt to include all items. So would I expect a professional quality list to include say just a photo from a user-generated website with no other info? No. Would I expect a list that is trying to be comprehensive to deliberately omit an item that verifiably belongs in that list? No. What I've been trying to do by suggesting various pictures from geograph etc is not to say that everything I've suggested needs to be in the list but that these things need further investigation because they may be evidence that the list isn't comprehensive. Is it 'practical' to investigate some of these? I'd say yes. So if there was info in a geograph page associated with an image that couldn't be found elsewhere then I'd email the photographer and ask where they got that info from etc.

Maybe I'm trying to apply the (professionally) well-researched criteria from FA when that isn't actually in the FL criteria? Anyway, I'm happy to believe that the really major items are included and that there probably aren't that many of the size of say ShackStack missing and that if you didn't add anything else to the list I wouldn't use that as a reason to oppose.

Some comments on the list rather than what isn't in the list:

  • Link Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, Still Water (sculpture) on their entries.
    •  Done. (Incredible that it took till last month for someone to write an article on "Eros"!)
  • I would cut down on the amount of bracketed text in the 2nd paragraph of the lead.
    •  Done. I've kept only the first parenthesis.
  • 'Many of the most notable sites for commemoration' – what does this mean?
    • The three areas named‍—‌Trafalgar Square, Parliament Square and the Victoria Embankment‍—‌have an especially high number of memorials. It can be verified that these are considered to be especially notable as Ward-Jackson's Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster (2011) has dedicated essays on each of them, but not for the other districts within the book's scope. (From that book's blurb: "The use of Parliament Square, Trafalgar Square and the Victoria Embankment as sites for commemoration is discussed in sections within the topographical survey...")
  • 'on the western edge of the modern borough' – if this is an attempt to squeeze in the info that the borough boundaries have changed then I'm not sure this is important info for the lead.
    • I've reworked the sentence; it now has a different emphasis and mentions the Victoria Memorial.
  • Zimbabwe House is an unneceessary redirect (admittedly to an article that probably should be titled Zimbabwe House) (also do we need to know it used to be the BMA building here if the article is linked?)
    •  Done. Changed the redirect. The reference to the BMA is because the sculptures' symbolism relates to the building's original use rather than to Zimbabwe.
  • It would be nice if there was some way the reader could tell from the text they see that the link in the Title/Individual column was going to take them to the article about the individual or the statue. (this is already done for some of them)
    •  Done. Italicised all the names of individuals which link to artworks.
  • Might as well link St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. And St James's & Hyde parks on first mention. + Queen Caroline, Royal Parks Foundation, Tiffany & Co, Queen Elizabeth II, Greatcoat, Diana, The Long Water, Frock Coat, Dirce etc
    •  Done. Linked St Martin's Lane, Drury Lane, Queen Caroline, Elizabeth II, Greatcoat, Diana, Frock coat, Dirce and others.
    • Re the parks, which is best, linking them on first mention but not in their dedicated sections, only linking them in the latter (as is the situation now), or both?
  • I'd link Father Thames without a piped link (which I'd prefer was a redlink than the current useless redirect) or just link the Thames part.
  • Sigismund Goetze looks worthy of a redlink.
    •  Done. I'll create an article shortly as I don't like red links!
  • 'The installation of the Canada Memorial in the park in 1994 marked the end of a traditional reluctance by government to site memorials in the Royal Parks' – this can't be true as the SHAEF memorial in Bushy Park had already been erected in March 1994.
    • Rephrased as "Governments have traditionally been reluctant to situate memorials in the Royal Parks, and there were none in Green Park until the installation of the Canada Memorial in 1994".
  • Round the coordinates to the same number of decimal places throughout?
    • Is there a particular way of doing this? An automated or semi-automated way? It sounds like quite an operation otherwise.
      • You can use the round template within coord if you wanted to do it that way. I think that anything currently given to 6dp (about 10 cm precision) needs rounding to 4 or 5 dp as it is falsely precise otherwise. If you are confident that all the coordinates given to 5 dp are good to within 1 m then round to 5 dp, otherwise 4 dp would seem plenty to me. JMiall₰ 20:29, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do we need George Gilbert Scott linked 13 times in a row? Also the frieze table is overlinked.
    •  Fixed. All duplicate links within sections have been removed. But I've kept some duplicate links thinking that if, for instance, someone were reading the entry for the Cenotaph and wanted to follow a link to Edwin Lutyens, they wouldn't have to scroll all the way up to "Aldwych / Strand" to find it. In the list entries the links "reset" for every new section, as it were.
  • another possibility?
    • My feeling is that it should go under architectural sculpture. Bluerain on the other list is very similar.
  • I added a photo of Timelines.
    • Thanks! :)
  • Allies has a spare #
    •  Fixed
  • something could be said about the cooling tower it is covered by a number of online sources
    • I don't think the online sources really say anything about it; it would be better to find a good essay. This applies for the Tottenham Court Road mosaics too. (I said above that the station was in Camden; that was because the article for it was miscategorised at the time.)
  • this ref doesn't work for me. JMiall₰ 00:29, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links/refs: I've tried to load every cited website that wasn't added recently.

    • @JMiall: Thanks for your rigour in going through all these.
  • I don't know what most of the link in #51 is meant to be doing but just this part seems to have the same effect. There are other long google book search links that could probably also be trimmed.
    •  Fixed the first instance.
  • 1, 2 (also no menton of registraton required unlike other ODNB entries), 3, 4, 5, 6 don't work for me.
    • [1] replaced with this archived version; I'll replace [2] with a citation from Pevsner when I get a chance to visit a library which has it; I've replaced [3] and [4] with this more up-to-date link; [5] works fine for me; [6] is the broken link already noted above‍—‌I'll have to email PaddingtonCentral to ask about an alternative printed (or, less likely, online) source.
  • #245 has no retrieved date if you are citing it as an online resource or publication info if published as a book.
    •  Fixed. Today's date added.
  • #478 was retrieved in 1920 & 526 in 201!
    •  Fixed. Today's date added for both.
  • #563 needs registration but this isn't noted
    •  Fixed. The author seems to have changed the settings of her blog to private; I've found a more public link instead.
  • I haven't done very much checking of facts against refs as a proportion of the refs but what I have checked has seemed OK. JMiall₰ 18:45, 20 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can we have some more redirects to this article please, currently there is only one. Things like 'List of statues in Westminster', 'Sculptures in the City of Westminster', 'Mosaics in Central London', 'Public Art in Westminster', 'Public sculpture in Westminster', 'Statuary of Westminster' and variations on those themes. I'm sure others can think of more terms people might try to search for. JMiall₰ 19:06, 20 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Creating the following:
Ham (talk) 08:22, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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