Peace Mosaic's Popularity Should Inform Community Conversation on the 25th

On the front page today is a nice story about more detail on the plan to relocate the Peace Mosaic from the Court Apartments at the YMCA to the new annex planned for the Carousel at Riverfront Park. It sounds like destiny:

The local architect firm working with the carousel couldn't believe it when measurements were compared. The back side of The Stables is the same length as the Peace Mosaic.

"It was like serendipitous," said Alan Costic, president of AC + Co Architecture | Community. "It just happens to fit, and we have a wall for it."

With talk about the mosaic, the recent bottle bill art, and Eye of Salem-Sauron at the Police Station, and the brand new piece at Bush Park, the City has also announced a "community conversation" about public art for September 25th. (They are asking for an RSVP; this helps with refreshment count, of course, but also may diminish the sense of "all are welcome.")

The Public Art Commission has seemed like they view themselves in a curatorial role, selecting "good" art to deploy. But they have not seemed like they had enough consideration for the public, who in general is not going to participate in any connoisseurship and who will ask of art very different question from the questions of artists, gallery-owners, curators, or artsy others. They have also seemed like they were bound to a destination model of driving, getting out of the car, and appreciating an instance of public art, and then driving away.

Selection criteria: "quality" but beauty is not mentioned
(Public Art Commission Policies)

Shouldn't public art be oriented more to passers-by who do not have knowledge of the art and are not expecting any art?

Our adopted policies reference "artistic quality" only, and in context this focuses on elite peer evaluation rather than public reception, and may not weigh "public" sufficiently.

Do we even have a theory of public art? What is it good for? What are its aims? How much should beauty, delight, and refreshment be a goal?

In his book Walkable City Rules Jeff Speck argues that murals on the blank walls overlooking parking lots and empty lots are a much better investment than statuary set in grassy spaces or concrete plazas.

Earlier this summer in the Sculpture Garden on a lovely evening

The Sculpture Garden seems to exemplify the problem:

For a few decades, starting in the mid-1960s, the inscrutable sculpture dropped on the plaza was the dominant form of public art. The rise of "1% for Art" programs nationally, while a wonderful trend, unfortunately reinforced this approach, since architects found it so much easier to exile the art to the landscape rather than to involve artists in the building design process.

He may go in a little too far on the decorative and "remedial role" of art, however.

But this still seems like a useful corrective to the "plop art" he criticizes. The Peace Mosaic had community involvement, it is broadly representational and can be grasped by any passer-by, and it is popular.

The Sculpture Garden is routinely empty, except for formally programmed events.

Probably more of our public art should take cues from the Peace Mosaic. Not all of it has to, but more of it.

Anyway, it would be nice to have wider conversation about public art and what we expect from it.