ART : Looking for Art in All Wrong Places (Like Hospital Cafeterias) : What explains the growing trend of assembling ‘exhibits’ intended for the public in inappropriate workplaces such as restaurants and hotels?

How important is visual art, anyway? Important enough to command the viewer’s undivided attention, and a room of its own? Important enough not to be co-opted as a perky, polite “garnish” for a public environment built and used for other activities?

Of course, you reply. Good art is not to be confused with interior decoration.

Then what explains the apparently growing trend of assembling art “exhibits” intended for the general public in inappropriate work spaces--restaurants, hotels, offices, even hospitals?

Recently I tooled down to the Dike Partnership, a landscape architecture and urban design firm in Irvine, to see the first of what was billed (in the press release) as “a series of exhibitions showcasing artists from Southern California.”

The art--a few abstract paintings by Mark Leysen and assemblages by Janice Lowry, on view through July 25--was banal, ordinary stuff. So in a way it didn’t matter much that the lighting was inadequate (especially on Lowry’s pieces) and that the works were scattered awkwardly through the lobby, a conference room and a portion of the firm’s working space.

But it was ludicrous to consider this group of works as a bona fide exhibit, even though it was “curated”--that is, selected--by Tim Jahns, who is on the Irvine Fine Arts Center staff. (For some reason, his affiliation--and the fact that he has organized other shows in other spaces--is not mentioned in either the press materials or the sparse information available in the firm’s lobby.)

It would be different if the firm simply wanted to dress up its public spaces by borrowing or buying some art. A visitor might have a decided opinion about the work or the way it was displayed; but, hey, taste is a personal thing.

The issue here is not whether it’s a good idea to put art in the workplace for the benefit of employees and business visitors; it’s the absurdity of calling a smattering and scattering of art plopped in an area otherwise devoted to other things an exhibit, and inviting the general public to see it as such.

Additionally, art exhibits shouldn’t be confused with the phenomenon of public art--that is, large-scale pieces placed in public areas like streets and parks, generally on a permanent basis. Public art--good public art, anyway--is specifically designed to hold its own in the real world of pedestrians and picnickers and such.

Any art exhibit worth the name has a clear-cut reason for being. A curator--someone trained in art--has an idea to present or a body of work in mind that merits viewing. This person rounds up the art and locates a space suitable for the art to be viewed as a discrete entity, without interference from outside stimuli.

Art was never meant to be seen while scampering around an office as if on a scavenger hunt, dodging company personnel and peering at people as they work.

On the same fool’s errand, I stopped off at the Irvine Medical Center. Nine months ago, the center began a program of art exhibits intended for the general public.

At the time, I wrote that the center didn’t merit consideration as an exhibition space because the art was nearly all hung in the cafeteria, for goodness’ sake. A visitor had to lean over people who were trying to eat in order to read the labels or even look at details of the works. I didn’t think I’d be coming back for more of this exercise.

But the curators of the space, Marian Globerson and Brenda Solomon, recently begged me to reconsider. “The atrium gallery space has expanded to include the upper concourse (lobby) level,” they wrote.

The new show, “Metal Workings” (through July 12) contains work by eight artists who use materials ranging from steel to silver Mylar. The work ranges from pedestrian abstraction (by Bret Price and Laurence Pace) to the mildly inventive work of Bosch and Gary Martin, whose massive, abstract-looking wall pieces incorporate the image of an object as well as its shadow.

Granted, nobody is scarfing down lunch on the upper-concourse level. But the art is drowned out by frantic visual competition--from busy rug and upholstery patterns, plants, myriad hospital signs, marble-topped pedestals and broken wall surfaces. The sculptures, scattered hither and thither among this decorator’s nightmare, look like wallflowers who don’t dare assert themselves for fear of offending the hostess.

The viewing situation in the cafeteria remains the same; a nurse having a snack looked quizzically at me as I pushed past dining chairs to get a closer look. There is additional work in two short, white-walled corridors adjacent to the cafeteria--the only area approximating a neutral viewing area--but all in all, the “exhibit” is too meandering and poorly situated to work as a cohesive entity.

There are other bothersome aspects of trying to show disturbing or potentially physically dangerous art in a hospital. A couple of Brian Bosch’s works--flattened steel shapes made from projected shadows of chairs--are cordoned off with velvet ropes as a safety measure, because the sharp edges of the metal protrude into the viewer’s space.

Is this fussy arrangement the way Bosch intended his work to be seen? For the past few decades, artists have been learning how to gain more control over the way their works are exhibited and perceived. For a sculptor to submit to the velvet ropes--unless they are expressly part of the piece--is to give up a significant portion of the work’s spatial authority.

An untitled shrinelike work by Kathryn Yelsa, which features a three-dimensional human heart and lacily carved wood panels resembling X-rays, is accompanied by the information that Yelsa was deeply affected as a child by her father’s heart attack. But this sad circumstance is not what people in a hospital want to hear, so let’s trot out the happy ending: Another note on the wall says her father had three bypass operations “and is very much alive and well.”

Artists who want their work to be considered with care and seriousness--rather than just adding a meaningless item to a resume or in hopes that some rich collector will happen along--should agree to show only in venues where the work gets top billing.