This thesis examines the limitations of public art as performance as a utopian concept through notions of space, medium, and legacy. It analyzes public art as performance through art practices that negotiate their space and their limits and are displayed in certain environments, and through the multidisciplinary contemporary artworks of artists Thierry Marceau, Jasmina Cibic, and Isa Genzken, as well as the 1964 outdoor exhibition Montréal International Sculpture Symposium. It maps a transition from objecthood to performative practices, while attending to the challenges these offer to the structures of memory and legacy in art history.