Where's the Boundary Between Public Art and Advertising?

The Fearless Girl and Charging Bull statues have been facing off in Manhattan’s financial district since March 8. The optics are still startling: a girl, fists on her hips, ponytail swaying, stares down a 7,100-pound bull, which stands 11 feet tall and 16 feet long in the heart of one of the world’s most powerful economic centers.

While many hailed Fearless Girl’s message of girl power, the backlash also started at once, and much of it centered on the statue’s uneasy relationship with advertising. Naysayers argued that the installation—produced by the ad agency McCann New York and artist Kristen Visbal for the asset management company State Street Global Advisors—was simply big business deflecting attention from its misdeeds with feel-good corporate feminism. (At first, the sculpture’s base included a plaque promoting SSGA’s Gender Diversity Index Fund; it’s since been removed.) Fearless Girl’s defenders remain legion, arguing that the statue’s potential to empower young girls matters more than its corporate origins. But all of these debates highlight a tension between the worlds of public art and advertising, and the thin line between the two.