How Public Art Is Changing New York City

It's a show of art, a show of architecture and a show of urban design. Most of all, it's a show that vividly portrays and explains the role New York City is playing in what many people say is the largest nationwide public art movement since the Works Progress Administration of the 1930's: ''Percent for Art'' programs in cities, counties and states throughout the United States. The show is at the City Gallery of the Department of Cultural Affairs, 2 Columbus Circle, through March 4.

By devoting an average of 1 percent of new public building costs to art, a diverse array of new, permanent public art is being created around the country - from murals in New York City school buildings to the design of manhole covers in Seattle. Since the early 1970's, according to National Endowment for the Arts statistics, about 100 city, state and county governments have begun such programs.

New York City was a relative latecomer; its ''Percent for Art'' law was passed by the City Council only in 1982, and the program began a year later. Since then, however, the program's growth has been dramatic, with its budget and number of projects each year now rivaling those of the largest programs in the country, such as those in Miami, Seattle and Los Angeles. 3 Done, 11 Planned The current exhibition brings visitors up to date on the growth of New York's art program. On view are photographs of the three city projects already completed and blueprints, models and drawings of the next 11 projects.

''It's a citywide project that's emblematic of the way art can be a part of public life,'' said Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. ''The artists are a most incredibly diverse group, but what you get from each of the pieces is that they are right'' for their particular sites, the commissioner said.

Getting the art to fit the site was one of the prime obstacles to getting New York's program started. Indeed, many art experts have noted that throughout the 1970's and early 80's, the bureaucratic struggles facing public artists in the city made it far more common for them to do public projects in other major cities.

Since 1983, however, the city has tried to entice its own artists (although not exclusively) to make art in their hometown. The key has been to involve the artist in the design of new buildings from the earliest stages - and to offer them the city's backing as the project passes through the bureaucratic maze. How It Works

In New York as elsewhere, for instance, a member of the city's ''Percent for Art'' staff meets with a city agency (the Department of Sanitation, Housing, the Board of Education, etc.) when it first proposes the construction of a building and reminds the agency that 1 percent of the money must go toward art.

The selection process for the artists also helps to insure, from the beginning, a close fit between the artist and the site. The ''Percent for Art'' program has a file of slides of the works of some 2,000 artists. When a city building is proposed, a panel of experts from the art world, the agency involved, the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Mayor's office searches the slides for an artist whose previous work seems appropriate for the project. Participation of the Community Board and the Borough President's office is also sought.

The projects presented in the current exhibit demonstrate how the early involvement of artists in design can result in an especially close connection of the art and the site.

This is especially evident in projects like those proposed by the artists Andrea Blum and Scott Burton in which they collaborated with architects to renovate waterfront piers in East Harlem and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. Public Function for Public Art

In both instances, the artist's contribution has not been in the design of a discrete art object - a sculpture, say, to be placed at the site - but rather in bringing his and her own sensibilities to the overall design of the piers.

Mr. Burton, for instance, who is known for designing highly sculptural furniture and who is committed to having artworks serve a public function, helped design several forms of seats and benches for the new pier in Sheepshead Bay.

In other projects, a touch of art history, and sometimes humor, is inserted into a specific social setting. Justen Ladda's proposal for a new extension to Public School 7 in the Bronx, for example, calls for an architectural niche in an interior wall, the sort that in a Gothic or Renaissance church might have displayed a sculpture of a saint or a biblical figure.

But in this niche, in a gesture to the imagination of today's high school students, is a painted bronze astronaut in a puffy white suit and a dark bubble visor.

Among the other projects is Donna Dennis's proposal for ceramic tile medallions, decorated with images of sailing ships and other nautical scenes, to be set into a steel fence around Public School 234, now being built near the Washington Market just north of Battery Park City.

The three completed projects of the program are a welded-steel sculpture in a park in Harlem, a mural in a Brooklyn elementary school and an aluminum frieze over a circular information desk at a new library branch in Queens.

Altogether, the ''Percent for Art'' program has commissioned roughly $2 million in art projects since it began in 1983, increasing its commitments from $40,000 the first year to $960,000 in 1987, according to Jennifer McGregor Cutting, the director of the program.

In addition to the projects in the current exhibition, there are 24 additional buildings in the city's capital construction budget for which an art project will be a component, Ms. Cutting said.