Works Under Fire : Public Art: Who Should Control It?

At the dedication of a neighborhood library here recently, with the mayor and other dignitaries looking on, several dozen respectable women quietly raised lollipop-shaped protest signs.

“Shame on Us,” one sign read. “A Nightmare in Our Dream Building,” said another.

The women had no quarrel with the library; most of them had twisted aldermanic arms to get it built. But, as their signs indicated, they felt they had been taken for suckers by the mural of soft pastels and slashing blacks, of exuberant and darkly profound phrases, that covered the walls of a library meeting room.

‘An Abomination’

The protesters had decided months before the mural was finished that it was “junk,” “graffiti,” “an abomination” and, at best, inappropriate for the new Conrad Sulzer Regional Library.

They organized as the Community for Accountability in Public Art and persuaded their alderman to introduce a bill that would wrestle some of the authority for selecting public art away from art professionals and give it to the people most likely to see the art.

Summing up the group’s feelings, Victoria Khamis declared: “Somewhere along the line, the public became chopped liver. We think it’s time the public got a say in ‘public’ art.”

The artist, Irene Siegel, accustomed to the more genteel receptions of gallery openings, was left shaking her head. “Art comes from caring, inspiration, being very idealistic,” she said. “But you feel like a dope being idealistic while everyone around you is trying to kill you.”

Lively Art Debate

A fuss over public, tax-supported art has surfaced across America in recent months, spawning lawsuits, legislative maneuvering and a lively debate that has begun to change the way public art is selected in this country.

Chicago, home of one of the largest collections of taxpayer-funded sculpture, is on the verge of rewriting its public art law. Disputes over public art elsewhere have resulted in petitions, public hearings and talk of referendums on artwork.

In New York, complaints about sculptor Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” in front of a federal building have prompted the government to seek a new site for the piece, a 12-foot-high, 120-foot-long rusted wall.

In St. Louis, the City Council appears ready to support the idea of holding a citywide referendum on “Twain,” a Serra sculpture constructed three years ago after more than a decade of consideration and reconsideration by several city administrations.

In Buffalo, N.Y., city bulldozers moved on a steel-and-neon sculpture, “Green Lightning,” and sculptor Billie Lawless had to get a court order to prevent it from being destroyed.

The American public’s art collection today is bigger, richer and more diverse than at any time in history. Parks, plazas, street corners, subway platforms and office foyers are adorned with artwork commissioned and paid for by governments.

The federal government alone has spent $7 million on 250 sculptures, murals and other art projects over the past two decades under the Art-in-Architecture program administered by the General Services Administration.

States and cities followed that example, and now 20 states and several dozen cities have “percent for art” programs under which a set amount--usually 1% or less--of the cost of new public buildings is set aside for purchasing or commissioning art. Many other cities and states, including California, are considering percent for art programs.

“I say hallelujah that art is becoming something people are debating, something that they care about,” says Madeline Murphy Rabb, executive director of the Chicago Office of Fine Arts. “But we cannot get so frightened about art that it becomes mundane, predictable.”

‘Artist Is Wrong’

Siegel, the embattled Chicago artist, thinks the country’s attitude toward the art world has changed. “The feeling in the country for the first time is that the artist is wrong,” she says. “I don’t know how you’re going to get public art under conditions like these.”

Many artists, including Siegel, say that creating public art is different from creating art for galleries or museums because it requires creativity without self-indulgence as well as a willingness to listen to the people who will be exposed to the work.

Richard Andrews, director of visual arts programs for the National Endowment for the Arts, encourages frequent discussions between the artist and the public. “There was a time when sheltering the artist from the community so he could create was a good idea. But not any more.”

Dennis S. Raverty, of the Boston Visual Artists Union, says everyone has to be willing to compromise, and “if the artist feels it compromises him too much, then he shouldn’t take the commission.”

Selection Process

Yet the public art debate goes beyond questions of creative freedom--to the artist selection process.

Governmental programs call for frequent consultations with architects, local art experts and community leaders. In practice, however, a sculpture or painting, especially one destined for a work environment in Manhattan or downtown Chicago, draws little attention from the general public until it is completed and unveiled. By then, it is usually too late to protest effectively.

In New York, for example, a blue-ribbon panel approved Richard Serra’s proposed sculpture. It did not, however, consult the people who worked in the buildings surrounding the site.

In later public hearings and petitions, more than 1,000 of those workers complained that the sculpture took up precious open space and cut off the shortest walking route between buildings.

Serra said he intended his piece as confrontational--and it was. Now, the federal government has taken the unusual step of considering alternative sites for the sculpture.

St. Louis Referendum

In St. Louis, Alderman Timothy J. Dee took a slightly different approach to another controversial Serra sculpture, “Twain,” an irregular triangle of 10-foot-high steel occupying most of a downtown city block. Dee recently sponsored a bill that would call a referendum on the $330,000 work, which was paid for by the National Endowment for the Arts and private donations.

“I don’t suggest taking a vote before a sculpture goes up,” Dee said in an interview. “But now, three years later, people are still complaining. They’ve had time to try and understand it--and they have rejected it.”

Irene Siegel’s library mural in a North Side neighborhood of Chicago was the most recent of 28 projects commissioned by that city’s 7-year-old percent for art program. She had submitted sketches of her proposal, which were approved by the city’s art committee.

But when several neighborhood activists saw the work in progress, they complained. For one thing, they did not like the colors. One wall contained impressionist drawings and sayings in black. It looked like graffiti, they contended, and might be a bad influence on children.

Residents Organize

Their primary complaint, however, was that the neighborhood was not consulted. About 30 residents, mostly women and all active in grass-root political groups, formed the Community for Accountability in Public Art, or CAPA, to fight the Siegel mural.

“Nobody wants to be accused of burning books, but you have to defend yourselves,” said member Victoria Khamis, who is also president of a neighborhood group whose motto is “a good neighbor is a nosy neighbor.”

Last May, the city called a temporary halt to Siegel’s work to discuss it with the neighborhood. Soon after the raucous public hearing, Siegel resumed painting. But the public mood had not improved.

CAPA members continued to criticize Siegel--during the artist’s work sessions at the library. They said her work was not a fresco, as the city contract specified, because the paint could be rubbed off the plaster wall. And they pressed their hands to the mural to prove it to visitors.

Mixed Reviews

The library opened this fall and Siegel’s work received mixed reviews. But it remained in place. A suit filed by CAPA to remove it is pending. So is the ordinance that would make representatives of the neighborhoods part of the art selection process and require public hearings to review models or drawings of planned works.

Alderman Eugene C. Schulter, the bill’s sponsor, says the city’s art selection committee is “completely elitist. When public dollars are involved, there has to be some accountability.”

Rabb, of the Chicago Office of Fine Arts, advocates greater community involvement but warns against “art by consensus. The selection has to be done by people who have artistic expertise and taste.”

Creative endeavors tend to spur disagreement, and artists and public art administrators say some controversy is healthy.

“There should be a normal level of tension, a process where you expect to differ. But there shouldn’t be the kind of war that we’ve seen” in some places, says Norma P. Munn, director of the Foundation for the Community of Artists in New York.

Who Decides

What, exactly, is quality art? And who decides? Those are the questions that lie at the heart of recent public art disputes.

“I honestly don’t think the general public expects all art to be the same and be likable,” says Andrews, whose NEA agency awards matching grants to cities for the purchase of art in public places. “I think they expect the selection process to be open, honest and sensitive to the neighborhood.”

There are indications that things are changing. The GSA’s Art-in-Architecture program commissioned artists for a new Social Security building in New York recently--with a new rule. Sketches or models must be widely distributed to the public before work on the art itself begins.

Many famous artworks were vilified when they first appeared--only to be adored some years later.

Ford’s Protest

A 142-pound red sculpture by Alexander Calder in Grand Rapids, Mich.--the first work of art in this country jointly financed by public and private funds--was installed in 1969 amid much protest. Among its detractors was Gerald R. Ford, then the U.S. House minority leader from Grand Rapids.

But four years later, Ford told a congressional hearing on public art that he had changed his mind. The Calder work, he said, had stirred interest in downtown Grand Rapids and become a symbol of hope for the city. A drawing of the Calder sculpture eventually made its way onto the city’s official stationery and street signs.

More recently, Maya Yang Lin’s plans for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington created so much controversy that the government ordered a traditional bronze soldier statue be put up beside the black granite walls. Today, judging from the thousands of visitors and their frequently tearful reactions, her memorial is an appropriate, evocative work of public art.

Times Researcher Wendy Leopold also contributed to this story