3303
(2 votes, average 5.00 out of 5)
Written by Debra Brehmer, Contributing writer
Jul 14, 2011
A rendering of Alice Aycock’s proposed sculpture for the courthouse site. – Photo: Courtesy
Fraught with bureaucracy, plagued by populist taste and polarized opinion, confounded by infinitesimal minutia and mired in confusion. Public art is never easy. Further beleaguered by the guilt of spending public monies on something other than pressing infrastructure needs, public art falls limp and withers.
Yet, it is a hard weed to eradicate. Because the role of civic art and its relationship to quality-of-life issues dates to the ancient world, we intuitively sense there is something very wrong when contemporary cities lack strong art programs.
Recently, our new Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele withdrew $775,000 of funding that had been designated through the county’s Percent for Art program for public art. The county’s public art committee had decided that rather than purchase several works of art for various sites, it would pool the money toward one monumental project. The group met for two years and eventually selected the plaza on the south side of the Milwaukee County Courthouse (visible from Wells Street), where there is currently a fountain, to place a new work of art.
The committee then gathered and reviewed proposals from 253 artists and selected four finalists. The minute the names of the finalists were published, Abele must have received some heat and revoked the funding.
As quoted by Steve Schultze in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Abele simply said: “We are facing a budget from Madison that’s going to force cuts in transit, family care, senior care. We are going to have to make a lot of tough decisions.” Withdrawing this funding, however, didn’t seem like a tough decision. It was done swiftly, with little fanfare.
Ironically, it has been 11 years since a county executive canceled a county art project. Abele, a Democrat, has glided into philosophical rhythm with the infamous Scott Walker, who brought national embarrassment to the city when he canceled the contract for well-known artist Dennis Oppenheim’s “blue shirt” sculpture for the airport parking ramp. Walker thought that the artist’s shimmering blue glass form suggested that Milwaukee was a working-class city.
There is so much wrong thinking in Walker’s assessment of this project that one can hardly begin to unpack the confused circuitry and illiteracy. But Abele is worldly. His privileged upbringing and education, his informed outlook and aesthetic awareness, have shaped who he is. And perhaps all this has given him the ideals to pursue public office with a very different intent than Walker.
Unfortunately, Abele’s decision was no better informed or executed than Walker’s. Perhaps it is even a bit more inexcusable, since Abele had served on the board of directors at the Milwaukee Art Museum and should have known better. We can hope, however, that this project and others have been postponed rather than obliterated. With Abele’s predisposition toward art, this should be the case.
As stated in the hundreds of responses to articles about the cancellation of the project: “In a time (when) people are hurting, taxes are high and getting higher, and government spending is out of control at every level, artwork is a luxury that should not be funded.” This seems to be the pervasive attitude – that art is an ornamental frill added when all else is operating smoothly. One wonders if people who hold this attitude have ever noticed that most civilizations are defined and understood by the art they leave behind.
At the very least, public art activates public zones. It creates spaces where people meet, gather, and feel a greater sense of where they are and how they occupy constructed urban environments. It slows them down by making them notice. It interrupts scurrying. It provides a surprising experience that might make people wonder, or feel something. It breaks down social isolation. It encourages thinking, dreaming, imagining. And it absorbs and reflects the way people think.
Coincidentally, one of the finalists in this year’s public art mess was Alice Aycock, the wife of the recently deceased Dennis Oppenheim. History repeats itself. Aycock had proposed a large, white, wild flower design for the courthouse site. With Milwaukee’s reputation now firmly fixed as a city that does not support public art, one wonders if any national artists will respond to future calls for proposals coming from here. (Last year Public Art Review listed Aycock’s “Ghost Ballet” sculpture in Nashville as one of the 50 most important public art projects in the country.)
But the beat goes on. There will soon be a new public sculpture project installed on East Wisconsin Avenue by Brooklyn artist Janet Zweig that involves a series of intimate kiosks with mechanical flipbook animations. Local artists created the mini, visual narratives that will play in each kiosk. This project was initiated three years ago and has already received city approval.
Zeig’s project actually builds on one of the few strengths of Milwaukee’s public art landscape. (Yes, a strength!)
Although it has not been formally recognized or celebrated, Milwaukee’s downtown area has many public works by prominent female artists. The list includes Magdalena Abakanowicz, Beverly Pepper, Jin Soo Kim, Mary Miss, Jill Sebastian, Anne Whitney, Helaine Blumenfeld, Alicia Penalba, Hilary Goldblatt and Claire Lieberman.
This is something we can be proud of and build upon. Perhaps (if we continue to look at the glass half full), Abele has bought us some time to re-evaluate this problem of public art and come out with a stronger, more defined mission.
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