What happens when a discerning historian of urban public art is asked to join the administrative body responsible for regulating the very art that she has so shrewdly critiqued in the past? She writes a book that turns her gimlet eye upon her own endeavor, placing it in historical context while using the past to help explain the present. The Politics of Urban Beauty is the product of Michele Bogart’s service as the “lay” member of the Art Commission of the City of New York (ACNY) from 1999 (the year of her appointment by the Giuliani administration) to the end of her term as vice-president in 2003 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. This agency was founded in 1898 with an unusual brief: it does not initiate or design public art but rather reviews proposals for projects—ranging from mail boxes to paving to monuments and public buildings—to suggest modifications or “disapprove” designs. For the last one hundred years the ACNY has functioned as check, arbiter, voice of taste, and advocate of quality in the urban streetscape. Bogart describes its significance by noting that while New York is known by its landmarks, “the city’s streets and built environment are equally crucial in constituting...