Americans for the Arts

Mitch Menchaca

A local arts agency (LAA) promotes, supports, and develops the arts at the local level to strengthen the daily fabric of community living.

Each LAA is as unique as the community it serves and they all share the goal of enabling diverse forms of arts and culture to thrive, ensuring that they are available to every member of that community.

A local arts agency can be a private enterprise or an agency of local government that presents programming to the public, provides services to artists and arts organizations, develops and manages cultural facilities, awards grants to artists and arts organizations, organizes and participates in cultural planning, and/or promotes and creates cultural policy.

Local arts agencies are referred to by an array of names: arts commissions, arts councils, arts and humanities councils, arts and business councils, arts alliances, cultural alliances, departments of recreation and cultural affairs, offices of cultural affairs, arts funds, etc.  

In 2009, Public Art 4culture commissioned artist Leo Berk to develop a public art ‘kit of parts’ for short span bridges in King County, WA.

Berk worked collaboratively with the King County Bridge Unit to understand the function of short span bridges and explore design possibilities for bridge elements.

His residency included an extended period of learning the culture of the Bridge Unit, work methods and safety conventions as well as time spent in the field with engineers, ecologists, and archeologists.

In design phase, Berk worked with Bridge Unit staff to identify materials and bridge elements that would be feasible to use and easy to install.  

Liesel Fenner

Welcome to the Public Art Network (PAN) Blog Salon!

Blazing and buzzing all this week, join us as public art professionals from across the country discuss all-things public art.

In particular, we will be highlighting topics of the upcoming Public Art Preconference, "Innovations in Infrastucture," June 15-16, in San Diego.

Feel free to forward the blog posts to others, comment, and/or Tweet - Let's broaden the network of conversation and community.

We hear a lot about the term 'infrastructure' these days. The Preconference will be discussing how public art is incorporated in a myriad of types of infrastructure, including not only our built environment, but also media, the changes in how public art is reviewed and critiqued; social, the community involvement that informs the art itself.  

A production of "Macbeth" at The Old Globe in San Diego.

Not only does San Diego provide a laid back attitude, beaches, and fantastic weather, but according to Mayor Jerry Sanders, its investment in the arts is paying off.

Last week, Mayor Sanders announced that the city's $6.4 million investment of room tax dollars in the arts and culture of the city generated a return of $173 million spent by the organizations, including providing 7,000 jobs and $98.8 million in salaries. He also vowed to keep that funding dedicated to the arts in his next budget.

But, if a mayor that supports the arts isn't reason enough (although it should be) to come to our 2011 Annual Convention in San Diego, here are some reasons provided to us by locals in the know:

• Great Theater - The Old Globe's outdoor festival stage ranks as one of NTC Foundation Executive Director Alan Ziter's favorite arts experiences, while San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture Public Relations and Communications Consultant Toni Robin loves to see shows before they reach Broadway, often during trials there and at the excellent La Jolla Playhouse.
• Fantastic Food - Las Cuatros Milpas is real San Diego. In Barrio Logan, very close to the convention hotel, you can stand in line to buy the most authentic Mexican food in the city, and then eat at the nearby picnic tables.  
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Liesel Fenner

The National Endowment for the Arts Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD25) program recently awarded 21 grants totaling $3 million to support “creative placemaking projects that increase the livability of communities and help transform sites into lively, beautiful, and sustainable places with the arts at their core."

Substantial grant amounts of $25,000–$250,000 will address the budgets and scales at which communities are creating successful places where we live, work, and play. Many public art projects will be funded through the MICD25 grants including the City of Phoenix’s Gimme Shelter, a project within a larger work, Connected Oasis. Phoenix has an outstanding portfolio of public art projects many of which specifically address environmental issues. The recent 2010 Public Art Network Year in Review awards recognized Habitat by Christy Ten Eyck and Judeen Terrey, a garden habitat nourished by water from the Convention Center’s air conditioning systems.

Air conditioning—the panacea for the record-breaking heat much of the country has experienced this summer, however AC cannot always cool us as we navigate our daily routines. I have mapped out the shadiest routes to get to and from work. This summer’s weather has proven that cities must reduce the heat island effect of a rapidly changing climate. Thank you to the NEA for including sustainability as a goal in the MICD25 grant program! There is no better solution than public art and design to build sustainable creative places such as Gimme Shelter, which will provide shaded sidewalks, streets plazas, and open spaces.

What has been realized?...What has been dreamt and yet still a reality in the eye of the artist? In a true honouring of the precedent of the original Paris - Salon, 133 artists have been accepted into the Salon des Refuses - Sights Unseen, from 4 continents, 11 countries, ranging from well established artists; Janet Echleman, Mierle Laderman Ukeles to Vito Acconi and Buster Simpson  -  to emerging artists and newly minted unknowns engaging the sphere of public art with strong aesthetics of performance, process and thinking that represents a new dynamic in to address art in public space.

After reviewing ALL of the submissions and reading the narratives provided, my only question is this: What is the future of public art when great ideas are not realized? Can temporary site interventions now take a forefront to spur change and build a dialogue about art with communities? How can artists and vision be supported in new ways that might catapult the aesthetics of art in public space and help the jury process/curatorial choices become about amazing art? What about video and new media...not so new - yet, we are all new to the experience, and the viewers in all communities and neighborhoods value the same thing, to be thought of with a meaningful dialogue. 

How does one sum up the career of Louise Bourgeois, the French-born American artist who died on Monday in New York City at the age of 98? One of the reigning sculptors of our time, Bourgeois’ tough and emotional work was inspired by the darkest corners of memory and psyche. Evocations of her youth were represented by sexually suggestive fragmented forms, anthropomorphized abstraction, and brobdingnagian arachnids…referencing her mother’s role as both a protector and host but also echoing her craft as a master weaver and tapestry maker.

Her parent’s troubled marriage, complicated by her father’s long-time affair with Bourgeois’ own tutor, who lived in their home, played out in her work and her methodology. The artist said, “When a tapestry had to be washed in the river, it took four people to hoist it out and twist it. Twisting is very important for me. When I dreamt of getting rid of the mistress, it was by twisting her neck.”* Bourgeois’ unique ability to catch memory, like so many pieces of wool on barbed wire, and turn it into her medium and muse, is where her power lies.

Arlington County, located just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. in Northern Virginia, has officially hosted a public art program since 2000. But the program got its informal start with the work Dark Star Park by Nancy Holt in Rosslyn, which was commissioned by Arlington County working with local developer Joseph Kaempfer in 1979.

In 2000, Arlington County formally adopted a Public Art Policy and in 2004 approved its first Public Art Master Plan. Cultural Affairs staff member Angela Adams, who developed the Plan with consultant team Todd Bressi, Jennifer McGregor, and Brian Harner, became the Public Art Administrator. In 2002, the Program hired its first public art projects curator. In June of 2007, I took over that position.

Colleagues ask me what the difference is between a public art projects manager and a public art projects curator, wondering if we really all are curators. When I Googled the definition of “curator”—such a modern thing to do—I found many descriptions but they all refer to a curator as a person charged with the procurement, care and research of a collection, usually in a museum.

My assignment - to present 50 projects from the last 50 years for 50 minutes at lunch on Sunday at the Convention - has been a fascinating way to put my own career and observations about public art in perspective. I entered the field making flags for the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, visiting Art on the Beach and working for the Public Art Fund while Agnes Denes was planting wheat in the Battery Park landfill. When I started at NYC Percent for Art in 1983, Tilted Arch was recently installed downtown and the selections of artists for the Battery Park City design teams were just getting off the ground in a trailer onsite.  Now there are fabulous books and websites that document the accomplishments of programs throughout the country.

Glad to hear the selections for Year in Review are going swimmingly. Curiuous to see what you and Fred come up with!........I have been  thinking about your comments and I too agree that public art is alive and vital–simultanesouly, at this time our industry is currently in an  important transition.

I believe that the audience and viewer engagement, participation with “public art” is shifting to one of where ideas, contemporary frameworks and conceptual experimentation is ripe for a  new public engagement, yes - I am utopic in spirit,.... however there has been a   move in attitude - I wonder if others would agree?....and it is time and many are ready for contemporary innovation and the impact of the artist to become more expressive. Without artists, there is no art in the public realm. Does there need to be a divide between studio aesthetics and great art in the public realm? How is a good concept judged "good"?

It has been ten years since the Public Art Network came under the umbrella of Americans for the Arts and what a decade it’s been! To celebrate PAN’s 10th anniversary we are going back to the Public Art Preconference format just this year with this year’s Redefining the Public Paradigm, June 23-25, 2010 in Baltimore prior to the annual Americans for the Arts convention.

The Preconference is organized with keynote presentations as well as roundtable workshops categorized under the themes of Technical Assistance and Envisioning Possibilities. Each roundtable workshop will be facilitated by topic experts with discussion among all participants. The goal is to engage emerging and established artists and administrators to discuss the topic issue, share opinions, strategies, tactics, and develop responses and solutions to the issue. Outcomes of the roundtable workshops will generate recommendations for best practices, legislative priorities, areas in need of further exploration, and articulating the needs of the field in the next few years.

Technical Assistance sessions include: Conservation; Collections Management; Contracts and Copyright; Developing an Artist Training Program; Public Engagement and Evaluation Methodologies; and, Public Art-Private Development Ordinances.

Envisioning Possibilities sessions include:  Innovative Project Management; Social Practice and Community Participation; Technology-New Media-Maintenance; Unhinged-New Considerations in Public Art; International Models; and Temporary Public Art.

The packet arrived along with the password. 390 applications of public art completed in 2009. And Fred Wilson and I are supposed to co-jury the 40 best?

So many efforts to compare and rank: a no-budget, ephemeral painted snowscape and a million-plus permanent plaza of granite and bronze. A 5-hour, 30-artist free public cabaret and a 6-part suspended wood sculpture donated by its creator.

Time and performance versus place and design? Repeated enjoyment vs. remarkable moment? Is it a greater achievement to create new architectural spaces or reinvigorate depleted historical sites? And sculptures that are reconstituted in diverse sites – are they really new in 2009 or newly contextualized existing works?

If there is any trend in the 2010 jurying for YIR it is that public art has succeeded, wildly.

May 14, 2010

On May Day, I watched for the first time the high energy starting ceremony of the American Visionary Art Museum’s 2010 Kinetic Sculpture Race. The teams that work for months to create outlandish amphibious vessels are known as much for their quirky themes and costumes as they are for their uncanny endurance skills. The community-based event is just one example of Baltimore’s interest in ephemeral public art. Contemporary art enters urban space in other ways, too—during the Transmodern Festival (April), the Evergreen Sculpture series (May) and Baltimore’s three-day Artscape festival (July) that features a midway with DIY artists’ projects.

MAP (Maryland Art Place)—the state’s oldest nonprofit contemporary art center—is only a 10-minute walk from the 2010 AFTA conference site. We’d like for the world to take note of Baltimore’s contemporary art scene. That’s why we’re launching a series of public art initiatives, beginning this summer with our first-ever project outside MAP’s galleries. At 6pm on June 23, MAP presents Everybody Suz-ercise! with Miami-based artist Susan Lee-Chun and a team of Suz-ercisers for the PAN Pre-Conference opening event.

The performance begins on the plaza at Market Place, just outside the doors of MAP, and proceeds to the edge of the Harbor where high mode team will finesse a choreographed routine on the green space across from the Aquarium. You can check out the faux fitness program created by The Suz @ www.TheSuzItsFauxReal.com.

Liesel Fenner

For many art and design professionals working on projects for public space, we often do not see our ideas and visions realized. This is especially true when a recession hits and the construction and building industries come to a standstill. Private developers cannot get loans, bond measures do not win voter approval, and nonprofit facility capital campaigns slow to a crawl. It is challenging to retain the vision of creative ideas, when arts organizations are forced to re-examine every penny spent, hoping to avoid fateful cuts to successful programs built during more plentiful times.

For the public art sector, economic downturns are another facet of the many reasons a project may be rejected. Perhaps ‘rejected’ is not completely accurate, but the basic fact is that not every public art proposal gets built—not every idea, realized. For artists accustomed to going into their studio and emerging six days or six months later with a final artwork, the process and timeline is completely different for artists creating artwork for public space. A public artist adds a few extra years to the project completion date (try six years on average) and no differentiation between permanent vs. temporary public art. The timeline and process can be parallel for both forms (i.e. Christo and Jeanne-Claude).

Many public art projects are never realized for a myriad of reasons: there are three finalists proposals—one will be selected, the other two rejected; the selected project does not meet zoning or building code approval; the project funding gets rescinded, bond measure rejected, or grants never materialized; citizen groups take issue with the art form, materials, content, any list of items that prevent the work from being built.

Am I revisiting your last project nightmare?

So, where is that rejected project now?

In this month's ArtNews magazine, I read a book review covering In Curating: Interviews WithTen International Curators. Carolee Thea, author of the book, quoted one curator who shared his innate perspective that, curators are mediators between artists and the public. I couldn't help but think, isn't that what I do (at least part of what I do)?

For the last day-point-five, I have been attending the Arts in the Airport workshop presented by the American Association of Airport Executives. I posed these question over cheese and berries last night, do Public Art Administrators think of themselves as curators? Are we curators? The question evoked/provoked some rather lively discussion. We really delved into the highs and lows of elitism, juxtaposed the field of museology and shared challenging views of how the two fields compare.

written by Marc Pally

"Hey Dave!"
2009 Dave Clarke + team
photo: Marc Pally

All Night Long, not the Lionel Ritchie song but an art event called Nuit Blanche. First started in Paris in 2002 by a visionary mayor determined to bring contemporary art to the public’s attention and to integrate it into his agenda of re-energizing the French capital. The wild success of Paris’ Nuit Blanche prompted other cities to develop their own all-nighters, including Toronto, which just finished it’s fourth such event, called Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, in acknowledgement to the huge Canadian bank that provides core funding. The official tally is 130 projects including over 500 artists. This is a huge organizational effort undertaken by Toronto Special Events, a unit of the City of Toronto’s Economic Development, Culture & Tourism Division.

"Sounding Space"
2009, Karlen Chang, Dafydd Hughes, David McCallum
photo: Marc Pally

The projects ranged from the most humble, low-tech (no-tech) to the glittery display of hi-tech wizardry. The event (or “free all-night contemporary art thing” according to official marketing) was centered in three zones, all more-or-less downtown, though distances for some events were beyond comfortable walking. Bike riding was encouraged and seemed like a sensible way to handle the spread of the events between all three zones. Trolleys, buses and the subway ran all night. Within each of the three zones, it was very easy to walk from project to project. Good maps and a program guide were made available at four information centers. Great effort and success was achieved through www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca.

Five hundred miles northwest of nature’s scouring of the southern California landscape a planned burn is about to take place in the Black Rock desert of Nevada. At midnight August 31, the gates opened to hundreds of cars, RV’s and truckloads of people and arriving for the week-long Burning Man festival of art, self-expression, self-reliance, participation, and community.

Americans for the Arts featured Burning Man founder and director Larry Harvey at the 2007 Las Vegas Annual Convention. Harvey co-presented with artists Lady Bee, Louis Brill, and Leslie Pritchett discussing the interactive art of Black Rock City, the temporary experimental community of over 40,000 people that exists the week before Labor Day every year. Each year, participants bring art of all forms as well as materials to create more art during the week-long event. This year’s theme, Evolution, was posed to Burners, “What are we as human beings, where have we come from, and how may we adapt to meet an ever-changing world?”

What is Burning Man? According to their website, “Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind.”

Peripatetic arts visionary Sabato "Simon" Rodia completed his artist-initiated private art project, Watts Towers, in 1954.  He moved away from his masterpiece and LA property that year,  and he died in 1965 purportedly without seeing his lifework again.

Mike Boehm’s Los Angeles Times artblog articulated the history, maintenance and conservation shortfalls of the City-owned Watts Towers in a recent post. The complaint is that the City doesn’t spend enough to take care of the 55 year-old work.  Truthfully, few cities, counties or states adequately fund public art collection maintenance or staff collection management to implement the multiple assessments, maintenance and conservation projects that are part of a mature civic collection.

When collecting and commissioning art in public spaces as building enhancements, governments rarely consider the specialized maintenance and continuing conservation needs of art in public spaces.  The results are predictable. All stuff, from buildings to computer systems, car fleets and carpets, need maintenance. Public art assets need specialized attention that can be anticipated and should be planned.