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Notes -
The authoritarian/libertarian debate is one that has raged on forever and seems unlikely to be resolved soon, and note I'm actually not fully unconvinced of the more classical auth position as a general rule of governance. But an argument for denying the public their preferences with regards to art would actually need to include some convincing case that something like Zones of Immersion carries overall positive utility (I suppose Stuart Reid would say it raises awareness of the current social state of atomisation and isolation), whereas I would say that message is not being picked up by the public, or if it is, it's being received with annoyance and dismissal, and as such its existence is mildly negative utility-wise. I'd say many modern art installations are similarly net negative utility.
In order to "benefit the public through art" and "civilise the masses", you don't need to always fully cater to the public, but you need it to connect with them in a somewhat productive manner or the message will be lost. For a far more successful example of this, Mexican muralism is right there; these pieces of public art were meant to promote national identity and revolutionary ideals. Whether I agree with all of those ideals is another matter, I would say they largely succeeded at getting the message through to a receptive public, and there is a certain populist quality to that entire movement that makes it easy to engage with on the intended level. The aspects of modern art that allow it to be a vehicle for signalling taste is the very thing that disqualifies it as being an effective tool for social improvement. It just has too many hoe scaring qualities.
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