Is there a difference between public sculpture and public markers? Can they be blended? Should public sculpture make a statement about its site or merely sit in place and let the passers-by attach their own interpretations? Does public art have to be big to be important? Who decides about public art?

These questions and more have bubbled up since Durham and Raleigh both chose October to unveil a number of public sculptures.

In Durham, the Parrish Street Project completed and installed the last of six markers on historic Parrish Street, and in Raleigh, several permanent and temporary sculptures were installed on Fayetteville Street. Durham's new art joins Michael Waller's and Leah Foushee's two-ton bronze bull and the bronze Confederate soldier on the courthouse lawn. In Raleigh the new sculpture joins Dale Eldred's "Light + Time," a piece on Capital Boulevard that diffracts the morning and evening daylight and changes it to vibrant color. (I have yet to see this happen.)

Hovering over all this is the brouhaha that involved internationally famous artist Jaume Plensa. Several years ago, Jim Goodmon, president and chief executive of Capitol Broadcasting and owner of the Durham Bulls, offered Raleigh a significant gift of sculpture by Plensa for the newly opened Fayetteville Street. The City Council refused it, saying the site-specific sculpture would obstruct the view from the 20th century Greek Revival Memorial Hall to the 19th century Greek Revival State Capitol. Later Goodmon gave a different Plensa sculpture to Durham for DPAC, the new performing arts center. On performance evenings, its 7000-watts beam of light juts skyward from a 13-foot diameter ring, engraved with words from "Macbeth."

Comparing the sculptural markers in Durham to the large-scale works in Raleigh would be weighing apples against oranges; contrasting them, however, is instructive. The money involved is significantly different, and one plan is localized and specific while the other is generalized and abstract.

The Durham pieces were funded by a Housing and Urban Development grant of $148,500; Raleigh paid one artist, Jim Galucci, more than $2 million for his four light towers that define the Fayetteville Plaza. Raleigh has an art commission; Durham's art scene is split between several factions that cannot agree on the location of the heart of Durham.

Reginald Jones, who works for Durham's Office of Economic and Workforce Development and coordinates the Parrish Street Project, and I sat in Blue Coffee and talked about the Parrish Street project and about public art for the city of Durham. Jones said the defeat of the Prepared Food Act Tax in Durham last year stopped many of Durham's art dreams. In addition, he said, there are different groups who want to be certain their projects are celebrated and are not ready to come together. And Durham needs several more corporate citizens like Jim Goodmon to really spearhead public art that could be Durham's signature, he added.

U.S. Rep. David Price helped the Parrish Street Project get a HUD grant which made it possible to sound a call for sculptors and Liberty Arts artists. Alvin Frega, Jorge Gonzales and Libby Lynn won the commission. The six art markers are pedestrian-scale and include text and images of bronze, concrete, limestone, aluminum, glass and steel. They share a common base of concrete, decorated with an African spiral, meaning "going forward-reaching back," and sit on iron rails saved from the streetcar tracks that used to run in downtown Durham. Jones said Parrish Street was not the only black "Wall Street" at the turn of the century, but it is unique because the three main institutions, N.C. Mutual Insurance Co., Mechanics and Farmers Bank and Mutual Building and Loan Association, operated in a totally integrated milieu.

The markers include a bell that connects Parrish Street businesses to institutions like Stanford Warren Library, Lincoln Hospital and N.C. Central University; a tobacco leaf celebrating white men like E. J. Parrish, William Blackwell, Julian Carr and Ben Duke, who helped the black community set up its own financial institutions; and a man's hat and coat reminding us of the businessmen and bankers who walked on Parrish Street all week long. The art is very specific and celebrates the district with distinctive respect.

Raleigh's permanent sculptures are more generalized and abstract and include Galucci's light towers and a state-of-the-art LED installation by Susan Harbage Page and Juan Logan. Among the temporary pieces are an electronic touch screen created by Patrick Fitzgerald, the Raleigh city buses painted with original designs, and Adam Wall's "Toy Defense," a 1700-pound cart which will hold a visitor. Two huge sculptures, "Bow" by William Donnan and "Opposing Forces" by Hanna Jubran round out the work.

After visiting the art destinations, two things seem obvious: Cities need several plans to choose from even when the artist is famous and the art is a gift and cities need to have a unified idea of what they want. A fractured populace will cripple the best plan.

Temporary art is a great compromise; if it does not work the investment is small and the art can be replaced.

Blue Greenberg's column appears each week in The Arts. She can be reached at blueg@bellsouth.net or by writing her in c/o The Herald-Sun, P.O. Box 2092, Durham, NC 27702.