There are nearly 500 public works of art throughout New Haven, Connecticut--a city of 17 square miles with 130,000 residents. While other historic East Coast cities--Philadelphia, Providence, Boston--have been the subjects of book-length studies on the function and meaning of public art, New Haven (founded 1638) has largely been ignored.

This comprehensive analysis provides an overview of the city's public art policy, programs and preservation, and explores its two centuries of public art installations, monuments and memorials in a range of contexts.