Port District Budgets $700,000 for Art in ’86

The San Diego Unified Port District’s foray into public art on the waterfront--which received a setback last year when a New York artist backed out of building a controversial 65-foot stainless steel sculpture--is back on line.

And if that means embracing art that some consider too abstract, too controversial or just plain ugly, that’s what the Port District is planning to spend up to $700,000 to do.

“I hope we don’t have a mediocre piece of art on the waterfront just to appease some segment” of the population that doesn’t like a particular artwork, said Louis Wolfsheimer, a port commissioner, at a commission meeting Tuesday.

“I’d rather not have it at all . . . we don’t need mediocrity as a sop to opposition,” he said.

And so the tone was set, as the Port District’s Art Advisory Board, which had been under fire last year for a variety of reasons, including accusations of elitism, holding secret meetings and using an unfair art selection system, unveiled its plans for the coming year.

The advisory board’s top three recommendations for 1986 total $700,000. The Port Commission, while endorsing and defending the board’s work, held off making a decision for two weeks in order to get more details and a cost breakdown of the proposals.

Gerald P. Hirshberg, chairman of the art advisory board, said the first proposal is for an open artists’ competition for a $100,000 project on Harbor Island, of which $75,000 would be for the purchase of the artworks and the rest for various administrative expenses and to pay for the competition.

The second proposal is for a $350,000 art project on Spanish Landing, an area immediately east of the Harbor Island marina and adjacent to Harbor Drive. Unlike the open competition in the first proposal, Hirshberg said, the Spanish Landing project would be a “limited selection procedure,” meaning the advisory board would seek out particular artists or artworks.

The third-ranking project is for a $250,000 artwork in what is called Embarcadero Crescent, a part of San Diego Bay across from Lubach’s Restaurant on Harbor Drive.

There is $650,000 in the Port District’s art budget, which would pay for the first two projects, at a cost of $450,000, and most of the third. Hirshberg said the advisory board wants to hold off on the Embarcadero Crescent project until later in the year, when more art money may be available. In all, the advisory board has seven art sites selected through 1988.

Hirshberg, director of design for Nissan Design International Inc., said that in order to avoid controversy that is sometimes focused on a single artwork, his board wants to instead sift through several pieces of art for a site, thus showing the Port Commission that several alternatives are being considered.

But Hirshberg emphasized that the principle guiding selections of art should be diversity so that over time, the waterfront will have art that appeals to everyone. What Hirshberg hopes to avoid is a repetition of what happened last year.

In September, New York artist Ellsworth Kelly, an internationally acclaimed minimalist sculptor, refused to proceed with his $450,000 stainless steel spire, which was to be placed in Embarcadero Park, near Seaport Village.

Kelly dropped the project when the original site and design for the art piece were altered, and because he felt he was losing technical control. Kelly’s decision was attributed both to his sensitivity and to the controversy generated by citizens’ complaints that his design was sterile and failed to represent San Diego.

Hirshberg, in a telephone interview after the Port Commission meeting, said that in the Kelly aftermath, the advisory board decided it was best to work on several sites around the waterfront at once rather than be locked in on a single location.

“This is still a relatively young program,” Hirshberg said. “From the beginning, we’ve been evolving a procedure that everyone will feel comfortable with. We want to show people that we are selecting art for a range of choices.”

The other art projects proposed by the advisory board, but without a cost breakdown, include the Navy fleet landing area near the end of Broadway (for 1987), C Street Mall (1987), Embarcadero Marina Park (1987) and Coronado Bay Park (1988).