Americans for the Arts

Ron Evans

I wasn’t able to attend the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention this year, but I did get to participate in the next best thing: following the conversation on Twitter.

There were lots of great discussion and opinions. But unless you were following 24/7, you may have missed some gems.

So, I’ve gone through the entire stream of tweets using the hashtag #AFTA11 (all 2389 of them!) cut out all fat, and filtered them down to my picks for the top 50 most-useful tweets to me from AFTA 2011.

I say most useful because I wanted to separate out things that can be acted on, resources/measurements that can be explored, impactful facts and figures, and new “lightbulb ideas.”

A big thank you to these great posters for posting meaty tweets – If you like something you see, follow the author on Twitter.

So here goes, from oldest (public art pre-conference) to newest (end of conference) order…

Olga Garay

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) is pleased to announce that we have received an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), one of only 51 grants awarded nationwide.

DCA will receive a $250,000 award, the largest grant amount available, to support the design of the Watts Historic Train Station Visitors Center and Artist Pathways. Principal partners are the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) and the Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC), as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which is already providing preservation services for the Watts Towers.

Our Town is the NEA’s new leadership initiative focused on creative placemaking projects. In creative placemaking, partners from both public and private sectors come together to strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities.

Public art sheep takes a coffee break (Photo by Jed Berk)

You’re walking to your morning coffee shop passing by the regulars sitting at outdoor tables reading and sipping coffee. But wait, something is different. A guy is seated at a table with a sheep. Not a live sheep, but a white fluffy sculptural object placed on the chair next to him. Huh?

Ahhh...the beauty, surprise, and often, humor of temporary public art in spaces where one wouldn’t normally encounter art.

Who was behind this sheep ‘spotting’ moment? The City of San Jose Public Art program - the 2011 Public Art Network Year in Review Program of the Year!

A Champion Flock of Weed Eaters created by artist Jed Berk was reported and digitally recorded  being spotted around the city of San Jose. A temporary public art project for the San Fernando light rail corridor, it was a partnership between the city and the 01SJ Biennial.

Weed Eaters was an anchor artwork on the front lawn of the Diridon Station where a makeshift ‘barn’ housed the flock of sheep and their ewe, a four foot tall ‘Mother Sheep’ complete with an internal computer sculpturally placed in her ‘belly’.

Nina Ozlu Tunceli

I'm here in Chicago at the National Mayors Summit on City Design sponsored by U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Architectural Foundation.

Yesterday, I participated in working sessions with mayors, city planners, and architects to develop a series of recommendations to federal officials of how to streamline partnerships to create economic development and improve city infrastructure.

Specifically, I made several recommendations, including creating incentive funding for cultural districts and public art programs in federal infrastructure projects and economic development zones.

I am pleased to say that I was not the only carrying messages about the importance of the arts. 

Liesel Fenner

It has been a whole week of public art blogging from 19 PAN peeps!

Thanks to everyone who contributed, and keep the Tweets, Facebook shares, comments, etc. coming.

Topics ran the gamut, from Leo Berk’s ‘non-typical’ artist residency working with the King Country (WA) bridge division, to Katherine Sweetman’s (first and final) blog–as-art-intervention for the San Diego Union Tribune.

As we noted, many of the bloggers will be presenting at the Public Art Preconference, June 15-16 in sunny San Diego. (Re-click on the link: the site is updated every day). 

Wendy Feuer

Wendy Feuer, Assistant Commissioner of Urban Design and Art, New York City Department of Transportation, will present her innovative program at the Built Infrastructure: Interdisciplinary Initiatives Public Art Preconference session in San Diego this June.

Feuer’s blog outlines proposal authored by the Transportation Research Board Subcommittee on Art and Design Excellence in Transportation. The study will examine art in transportation program, feasibility, art and design in transportation projects, proposed funding of programs, and assessing value and outcomes – to offer successful models for how more transportation agencies can incorporate public art.

Transportation infrastructure is one of the leading ‘shovel-ready’ programs of our nation’s agenda, let’s add art to the equation. ~ Liesel

Many communities are interested in public art programs to further their economic development, tourism, and place-making initiatives. Art programs can enhance the quality of public spaces, reflect local culture, and provide a venue for community engagement in project planning and design decisions.

In these ways, art programs can support the Livability Principles of the Federal Partnership of DOT, HUD, and EPA.

As public transportation agencies (sponsoring urban and rural public transit, high-speed and intercity rail, air travel, passenger boat and ferry travel, bicycling infrastructure, and walkable neighborhoods) respond to community interest and incorporate art in their projects, the need has been demonstrated for a resource booklet of successful public art processes and practices specific to the context of public transportation.  

Every Beating Second

Former PAN Council member and Year in Review Award winner, Janet Echelman’s Every Beating Second, just premiered at Terminal 2 in the San Francisco Airport. Additional SFO artworks will be highlighted in the Travelers as Cultural Audience Public Art Preconference Session.

While all of that work is already being spotlighted at this year's Americans for the Arts Annual Convention, you still have time to share that spotlight.

The 2011 Public Art Network Year in Review is accepting project submissions until next Friday, April 22, 2011.  

Madame Curie

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has commissioned Jennifer Steinkamp to create a new work for MCASD Downtown’s Joan and Irwin Jacobs Building.

Entitled Madame Curie, this new commission is inspired by Steinkamp’s recent research into atomic energy, atomic explosions, and the effects of these forces on nature.

Marie Curie was the recipient of two Nobel Prizes for creating the theory of radioactivity, and discovering radium and polonium.  

Helen Lessick

There are three reasons public art file searches are performed: Cultural Tourism, Community Practice, and Critical Assessment.

1. Cultural Tourism: Where is the artwork (GPS/location info), what is it (art work title sometimes is what is being searched), who made it (artist’s name), and what does it look like (a clear image of piece as experienced by the viewer)?

2. Community Practice: How the community achieves the project, a lessons-learned toolkit, documenting what was done, who did it, and how. This type of material includes artist selection, proposal, contacts, contracts, maintenance report, community engagement, and fabrication records.

3. Critical Assessment: These are materials generated outside the work of the artist and any commissioning agency. They may include critical writing mentioning the project, press releases, art dedication, and project description. Currently, art administration educators and their TAs are building courses about our practice. Art critics and bloggers are writing about stuff in public. Professional media outlets seem to shout the loudest, and turn up first in online searches.  

From Albuquerque to New Haven, from Providence to Portland, from Kansas City to Culver City, from Toledo to El Paso, from New Orleans to Albuquerque, over 28 public art collections across America are collaborating with cultureNOW to create a digital National Gallery of art and architecture in the public realm.

Already one of the largest and most comprehensive compendiums in the country, the online collection encompasses more than 6,000 sites and 11,000 images.

The website and iPhone app were created for people who are curious about the world outside of gallery walls.

It is meant to tackle some of the challenges of visiting works of art and architecture.

Is the piece where it's supposed to be? If you make an excursion to a specific artwork, is something else interesting nearby? How can you minimize schlepping heavy guidebooks around the city?

Would it be possible to actually stand in front of a work of art and see the rest of the pictures, the drawings, the installation photos while you were listening to the artist explain the vision?  

Cathy Breslaw

As a contemporary visual artist working and living in San Diego county, I am always contemplating where and how my work can be exhibited.

Over the last several years I have had opportunities to be part of temporary public art exhibitions in downtown commercial buildings, private companies, restaurants, and the San Diego International Airport.

While these exhibits have provided good places to be seen in the area, I never really thought about these exhibitions as "public art."

I pretty much took these shows for granted and in many ways, I may have been blinded by the traditional notions that “good art” should be seen in other venues like contemporary galleries, college and university galleries, museums, and hip nonprofit spaces.

I didn’t evaluate exhibition opportunities in the broadest sense and now that I have had time to reflect upon the past, I have learned some things.

One thing that has opened my eyes to the expansiveness of public art is the book I read called The Artists Guide to Public Art by Lynn Basa.  

Melinda Childs

After spending the past few years developing an Artist Services program for Forecast Public Art, I was thrilled to hear that the Public Art Network is creating conference content to specifically serve the needs of independent public artists.

I was honored when PAN asked me to facilitate the first ever Artist Track sessions. I soon realized I didn’t exactly know what that would entail since there was no precedent.

We’re conducting an exciting experiment, and I hope you will be inspired to take part!

The PAN Preconference is a natural opportunity for public art program administrators around the nation to connect with artists seeking projects and commissions.   

Helen Lessick

Project management in public art is, increasingly, information management.

As I travel, research and learn for WRAP, the Web-based Resources for Art in Public initiative, I see the potential for dots to connect across disciplines and efforts.

In public art administration we manage selection committees, contracts, and community processes to get an artist selected.

When the project is done, we manage documentation of the project, including its presence as a cultural object in our facility; its contractual life as a community building tool; and its online informational profile.

In public art competition and design, we manage our images and artists’ statements, documenting (and endlessly resizing) our creative works and our innovations in outreach, process, and community engagement. We write letters, articles, proposals and master plans, stored on the cloud, a hard drive, or memory stick, to help us apply for the next creative opportunity.  

Porter Arneill

From my perch on the far western edge of Missouri overlooking Kansas, I’ve been watching feuds on both sides of the state line as the two state arts agencies face the political and economic challenges du jour.

To the west, the Kansas Arts Commission recently faced abolishment as part of the governor’s executive reorganization order.

Fortunately, with help from legislators, individuals, and the Kansas Citizens for the Arts, they persevered. Unfortunately, the struggle isn’t over—the state legislature still has to resolve the Kansas Arts Commission’s annual budget and the Governor has a line-item veto.

To the east, the Missouri Arts Council was zeroed out by the House, despite the Governor's recommendation of funding at $1.2 million.

Ironically, this is in part because the Missouri Arts Council has a trust fund that was created and intended to grow as an endowment.

They’ll have grant funds for next year and perhaps beyond but without approved budgetary allocations, spending those funds now is effectively cannibalizing future resources.  

Leticia Fernandez Ivins

Southern California is dense with MFA programs – so dense that these artists are a cornerstone of the creative economy and help define the creative capitol that is Los Angeles.

Then, why am I not working with more (any, frankly) of this fresh post-grad crop of creative thinkers?

This is not out of ageism (and I adore the artists that I work with today), but yesterday I started to wonder how the 50+ public art programs in the region might better harness this concentration of creative talent in our own backyard?

Though graduate-level curriculum tends to be concept-based, some art professors have cleverly inserted the “art of business” into the MFA formula.

Yesterday, I lectured for an MFA course called, Graduate Professional Development.

This is the second course that I have instructed on the topic of public art history and practice to fine arts students.

To start the class, I asked everyone to state their name, current media, and either talk about a public artwork that they created or to relay a powerful public art encounter.  

John Weeden

In a conversation with a respected colleague last week, she suggested I share our story of how our advocacy efforts over the past couple of years have essentially brought the UrbanArt Commission "back from the brink."

I'd be interested to hear of other stories from public art groups whose programs faced serious funding and advocacy needs due to the economic crisis over the past few years, and the key strategies that worked in your particular situation (For the sake of this survey, I'm using the benchmark of when the big meltdown really began to cause serious stress here in Memphis in September 2008.)

In brief, we faced a situation where 9 of the 13 City Council representatives responsible for approving the funding of the Percent for Art program and its projects were newly-elected during the budget planning cycle in which I began in the position of Executive Director.  

This is the final Leo Berk post describing his experiences as an embedded artist with King County (WA) Bridge Division.

Have you heard the one about the biologist, geologist, engineer, and artist who hiked up a relic stream bed together?

I hadn’t either until last November when I headed to the Money Creek Bridge with King County Roads’ Erick Thompson (biologist), Julia Turney (geologist), and Rich Hovde (engineer).

These three were on their way to the Skykomish area to visit this bridge in order to solve a complicated problem together.

Put simply, bridges are made to stay put, and creeks, by nature, don’t.  

Katherine Sweetman

On November 7, 2010, artist Katherine Sweetman made an inflammatory and controversial blog post on the San Diego Union Tribune's new Sketchbook blog. The post lasted only 13 hours on the newspaper’s website, but by that time it had already gone viral.

The blog post, its repercussions, and its interpretations have been written about by the Los Angeles Times' Culture Monster blog; ARTINFO.com's Modern Art Notes section; VoiceofSanDiego.org (and response by Union-Tribune Editor Jeff Light); San Diego City Beat; San Diego Reader, the Bay Area Observer blog; the Fishbowl LA blog; San Diego Visual Arts Network blog; the OB RAG blog; EditorsWeblog.org; fnewsmagazine.com; and others.

Ms. Sweetman will discuss her San Diego Union Tribune blog post at the Media Infrastructure session of the Americans for the Arts Public Art Preconference.

Below, please find her initial blog post reprinted in its entirety:  

What is entailed in an airport art program?

Most days, my attention at work is focused on the logistics of temporary installations and managing our public art program. Twelve projects will be unveiled with the opening of the airport expansion program (the Green Build).

During this design build process, art and the building are on the same schedule and ideally all of us should play fair in the sandbox.

As many of you know, collaboration is not always easy. Most of the artists were under contract before spaces were defined for art. This has been easier for some than others. It is a tenuous line.

What comes first…The art? The building? The chicken or the egg?  

Christopher Hubbard

When things get tough sometimes the best thing to have is a friend in the business.

With budget cuts, dwindling staff, and a slow-down in municipal and private construction, it’s comforting to know that other programs are going through the same stress and surviving; sometimes even thriving!

It’s these relationships that keep us up to speed on what’s happening in the world of public art, and often how to make the most of the obstacles and opportunities that find us on a daily basis.

That’s exactly what Florida’s public art programs are doing, and they have been reaping the benefits of such since 1998 with the founding of FAPAP, the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals.  FAPAP is the brainchild of a number of Florida’s forward-thinking public art administrators, including Vincent Ahern, Barbara Hill, and Jan Stein.

Working off the model of the Public Art Coalition of Southern California, their idea was to create a unified group of public art programs for the state of Florida; a forum to discuss issues related to the field.  

Vaughn Bell

For the last couple years I have been the “staff artist” in the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), working on arts planning and as liaison for the 1% for art program and integrating design enhancements on SDOT projects.

I connect with a wide range of projects, from multi-modal trails and sidewalks to large bridges, and seek opportunities to incorporate art into the right-of-way.

I am embedded in the DOT offices, with a desk alongside the project managers in the Capital Projects and Roadway Structures Division.

In my art practice outside of the SDOT art role, I create immersive environments and installations, often involving living plants, which touch on our often paradoxical relationship to land and environment. How people relate to the urban spaces they inhabit and move through is always of interest to me.

In one project, I created a portable version of Mt. Rainier on a leash, available for walks in the city and accompanied by its own mountain soundtrack.  

Public Art PDX App

Have you ever forgotten your iPhone at home and spent the rest of the day wishing it had been your left arm instead?

Whether or not you have embraced smartphones, they have become a fundamental part of the American lifestyle.

In ten years, all cell phones will be smartphones, and every user will expect to be able to instantly access any information they want.

So how do public art programs keep up with this trend? How do we make our collections present in the virtual world?

The answer is both simple and complex.

When it comes to utilizing technology, the possibilities for showcasing our collections are endless.

There are so many possibilities that it becomes very easy to set ourselves up for failure. It becomes too costly, too daunting, and too labor intensive. And for struggling programs, the idea of taking it on usually doesn’t even get off the ground.

However, in the midst of all of the complications, it is easy to forget that stepping into the virtual world begins with a basic foundation—it starts with data. That is to say, good data. Websites and apps are only as good as the data they use. You could spend thousands of dollars developing an app, but if the content is inconsistent or missing, then the money is wasted.

Recently at the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) in Portland, OR, we were presented with the opportunity to showcase our collection on an iPhone app.