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Public Art: Can We Handle it?

by Gary Vikan on March 13, 2007

There's great excitement in the local arts community as our city council contemplates legislation that would mandate 1% of public (and, one hopes, private) construction projects for public art (Sumathi Reddy, "City Seeking to Craft Artful Image," Baltimore Sun, March 3, 2007).  Yes, wouldn't that be great?

But I wonder if we can handle it.  And by that, I mean, the messiness that comes with putting contemporary art in public places.  After all, it not only takes some cultural sophistication, it requires the long view - and very thick skin.

Consider the "critical" dynamic engendered by Jonathan Borofsky's Male/Female, the 50' brushed aluminum sculpture unveiled in front of Penn Station in June 2004 - commissioned and paid for by the Municipal Art Society.  "Two energies becoming one," said the artist, but the energetic chatter on the local cocktail party circuit and in the press was hardly of that synergistic sort.  An editorial that summer in the Baltimore Sun characterized the piece as "oversized, underdressed and woefully out of place" - as "tacky" ("Take this Art - Please," Baltimore Sun, August 13, 2004).  The main complaint being that it's an aesthetic mismatch for the beaux-arts train station behind it - a widely shared opinion, it seems: "Best Eyesore" in town was the verdict of City Paper's readers' poll later that year.

 And so the beat (the "beating") has gone on now, for months and months.  With, unfortunately, predictable results.

"Art Scrape," a puzzling editorial in the Baltimore Sun late last summer (August 28, 2006) evoked the notion that Borofsky's defenders were somehow "irritable," and instead of entering into an honest debate on the work's aesthetic merits (presumably, once it was moved), engaged in sneers and put downs - reactions which I seem to have missed, at least from that side (the defenders), these last two years.

Anyhow, the lamented result was that the Municipal Art Society's next commission - a statue of Frederick Douglass - was to be suitably classical and so tame, as the editorial quoted one official, that "people will yawn about it."

Baltimore is a great old city, and we seem, sometimes, to be intimidated by the greatness of our own past. But somehow, I think that McKim Mead & White's train station can handle Borofsky's big androgynous creature.  Yes, it's messy, but if you stand in the right place, Male/Female is in aesthetic conversation with quite a different building: that wonderful Brown Center at the Maryland Institute College of Art, by Charles Brickbauer and Ziger/Snead Architects.

Differ we will, and should - passionately.  But as we debate, let's celebrate the Municipal Art Society's courage to act.  Because in the absence of that courage, the 1% is without meaning. 

Comment by margaret koscielny on 3/13/2007 6:19:44 PM

Your blog is wonderful! And, the Walters has captured the affections of my 7 year old grand-niece, whom I took for a visit over the Thanksgiving holidays. She was so excited by the redone galleries, looking, with great intensity to everything. When the visit was over, she asked if she could come back the next day! Two days later, we returned, and she picked up a sketch box and walked through the Corbet show until she arrived at the seascapes. She sat, for 1 hour and a half, drawing each painting. The fabulous thing about this experience was that it slowed down the journey through the museum, forcing, in essence, both the aunt and the child to look more deeply at things. As an artist and as former curator, this is one of the smartest actions you have taken besides the free admission. A trip to the museum will now be more than entertainment, it will be an activity which will involve adult and child in a new relation with art.

By the way, little Renee will celebrate her birthday in April with a party for her friends, there, having waited since February for the priviledge. She doesn't mind. She says it's her favorite place to go.

Regarding so-called "public art:" as one who has had the misfortune to have created such in the past, I have come to feel public art is an oxymoron in a culture for which art is not part of the national discourse. Artists are not regularly called upon to share their views about the important issues of the day with the leaders of society in public forums. They are still viewed as eccentric outsiders and self-indulgent egoists.
Whatever they create for public spaces will have been chosen through group think, censoring, in a way, the end result, because the committee will want to please the public. The public can't be "pleased" in a society for which art is confined to museums and corporate offices, where art education is sorely lacking in schools.

Comment by Mark on 3/14/2007 9:17:47 AM

All good points. I like male/female it works well in the space and enjoy the view from the JFX in the early morning. But it could also successfully be a big crab, a Gandy Dancer or a giant H.L. Mencken. A destination point, train station, airport or bus depot, should give a traveler some reference to the local, something that makes that destination unique. This is an important argument to commission local artists for such locations and local architects to design significant structures. Frank Gehery can't possibly design everything... or can he?

Comment by Joan Sobkov on 3/14/2007 6:12:11 PM

Part of the problem lies in the old question: What is art?  To many people (and too many) people "art" should be what is familiar and easy on the eye.  It is only with the passage of time that unusual and challenging works become part of our visual history and easy to accept. Will the Municipal Art Society bow to those who want art "lite" or those who want to challenge us to truly look at what is in front of us, stretching our minds and imaginations.

Comment by Lenny on 3/16/2007 6:06:10 PM

Because the 1% for the Arts is a very old tradition by now in many American cities (if memory serves me right it was first started by Seattle due to the Wallingford neighborhood protest over "public art."), all the lessons and the how to's and the tried-and-true ways to make public art be first and foremost "public" are by now established and a good way for Baltimore to take the "lessons learned" from other cities and march forward a little better prepared.

Most cities have already discovered that there's room for both classical, to modern representational, to abstract, to perhaps even some not so new medias, such as video, online, etc.

One solution that some states (such as Florida I believe) have adapted for their state-wide 1% for the arts, is to have the public art that will be acquired for their state buildings be chosen not by a state arts commission, or an academic arts panel, but by a selection committee drawn from the people who will actually work in the building.

This most egalitarian and democratic of processes for choosing art, by the people who will actually live and work with the art, is a very progressive step towards democratizing the process of public art, and removing it somewhat from the hands of selection committees and people so far removed from "the public" that their decisions seem to deliver either yawns or astute controversy, but little "public" to public art.

Comment by Kelly B. on 3/18/2007 8:42:54 AM

I'm enjoying Dr. Vikan's blog and everyone's responses to it.

Many people are intimidated by "Art" and really have no experience with it other than childhood art classes. Baltimoreans are really unaccustomed to seeing public art in a wide variety of genres. We don't live surrounded by art in our public centres. With the exception of war heroes, historical figures and symbolic monuments, we're unfamiliar with more "challenging" work such as Borofsky's Male/Female. Isn't that sort of thing supposed to be *inside* a museum were only the initiated go?

Male/Female presents a number of challenges for us, the least of which is its juxtaposition to the beaux-arts station.  It isn't a readily recognisable image. We had to stop, maybe walk around it, study it, think about it before we could classify and judge it.  I think it made many uncomfortable because of the gender identity, sexuality and spirituality undertones. These are difficult subjects for Americans to confront. The discomfort we feel about the statue is, in part, due to its challenge to those deeply personal (and now political) issues.

Once art moves into the arena of public consumption, it takes on a life of its own. We each bring to its meaning our own experiences and expectations.  Its confluence of genders might be challenging for many who are not even aware of why they're uncomfortable. It is easier to judge Male/Female as mismatched to its surrounding or label it as ugly.

Comment by Connie Hoge on 3/18/2007 9:53:39 PM

Michellangelo's David began as Public Art.  It was immediately loved and hated. Nearly 500 years later, art students and historians still study/write about it.  It was very nearly destroyed not long after it was mounted.  Now it is considered one of the defining monents in Art.  Period.   We need more public art.  Whomever can pay for it has an obligation to "posterity" (whaterver that is) to commission, purchase, and exhibit it.   I may not like it, I may not like what I think it's trying to say, but I love the fact that we have it.  I long for more of it.  Visit Chicago, and see an amazing ammount of monumental sculpture- it feels like 15th century Florence!  
We participate in the richest society since the beginning of culture.  Surely we can buy art, our Polis can buy art, not just architecture, but Fine Art, to stimulate our citizenry.  Bravo!

Comment by FrankM on 3/19/2007 7:14:33 AM

Your blog is a great idea! The usual announcements for museums don't communicate personality. As for Borofsky - one never knows who will show up at a train station. Critic Catherine Millet might applaud the spontaneity. Functionally, this work could help those people who are always running late to find the station... I recall the reactions against the profoundly simple Vietnam War Memorial in DC. Will a future memorial to Bush's Folly capture the magnitude of half a million Iraqi's dead and the ruin of both the US economy and its foreign relations? I doubt it. Even if an artist has the guts and the vision - the public wouldn't buy it.

Comment by Alyson B. Stanfield on 3/22/2007 11:15:55 AM

Read about your blog in the Baltimore Sun (I'm in Colorado). As a former museum curator and educator (10 years) I would love to follow along, but need reminders. Would absolutely love to see you get an RSS feed here. Pretty please?

Comment by JAC on 3/24/2007 2:25:33 PM

I just wanted to say, what a wonderful idea...great way to engage the community in artful conversation.  Thank you.

Comment by Max Kuehn on 3/26/2007 11:34:56 PM

I've always been wary about public art.

Some public art is quite beautiful, of course, but as some have already commented on this thread, a public artwork too often ends up as either a designed-by-committee bore or a self-important, esoteric mish-mash. Also, it almost always seems to end up being quite enormous.

Perhaps all art has these same problems, but public art bears the burden of criticism because A) it recieves much more public exposure than most private works, and B) it's audience feels that as they paid for it (through taxes), it should meet their standards to a higher degree than privately funded art does.

Do these comments support HTML? I'd like to place  a link on here but it doesn't seem to be working.

Comment by Chris Petty on 6/30/2008 3:10:35 AM

It's a pity that Baltimore residents cannot admire sculpture gardens lining mount royal avenue, botanical gardens in Patterson Park, and a 50 foot bronze fountain given by henry tiffany in the late 1800's to the City of Baltimore. (it was scrapped during the world war II metal drive.) What do we replace these empty lots with? Objects that invoke reation, not an apprecciation of beauty, but shock. "wow that's a big he-she statue ain't it dad?  So what do we tell our children when they see pictures of Old Baltimore, and say WOW Dad! Let's go see what used to be," Build modern art, YES! But not at the cost of ruining historical public art. The beauty that once graced Baltimore is no longer.