Port District Let Down Its Arts Avisory Panel

‘What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

That famous line, uttered by prison warden Strother Martin to Paul Newman and other inmates in “Cool Hand Luke,” now cliched line also sums up the problem between San Diego Unified Port District commissioners and their arts advisory committee. The commissioners’ recent decision to reject the panel’s proposals for artworks on Port District land is a pretty clear indication that team play is not the commission’s forte.

Indeed, the commissioners seem to have changed the ground rules without bothering to explain the new rules to the six members of the blue-ribbon panel of art experts they appointed four years ago. Now the advisory committee is walking away, resigning en masse, and leaving the commission members to their own tastes, whatever they may be.

The arts panel was appointed while William Rick was chairman of the Port District commission, and Rick, along with commissioner Louis Wolfsheimer, has consistently backed the arts panel’s recommendations.

Subsequently, Daniel Larsen and Raymond Burk have been appointed to chair the commission. These appointments have left some members of the arts advisory committee less than thrilled.

“They know nothing about the process; they see it as a big pain they’ve inherited,” said Hugh Davies, director of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. “It would have been much braver to meet with us and . . . hear our concerns.

“As a committee, we have proved conclusively that we are ineffectual. We haven’t been able to place a single artwork in four years.”

In fact, the panel has recommended three. The first, by famed artist Ellsworth Kelly, was approved by the commission, but only after Kelly was forced to make compromises that he regretted so much he eventually withdrew. Last week, the commission rejected recommended sculpture proposals from Vito Acconci and Roberto Salas. Like Kelly, Acconci had also modified his original design in an attempt to satisfy the commission.

Davies called last week’s commission rejections an “egregious betrayal” of the panel.

“After the Kelly debacle, we had very clear assurances that this wouldn’t happen again,” Davies said. “We added a lay person to the committee (at the commissioners’ insistence), and they said they would go to the wall with us. They have left us twisting in the wind for two years.”

Of more concern to Davies is the fact that, during the past two years, the commissioners have selected sculptures for Port District lands without polling the committee. One is a bronze casting of Charles Lindbergh at Lindbergh Field. Another is a figurative memorial to Portuguese fishermen on Shelter Island.

Davies called the Lindbergh sculpture “a gratuitous piece of kitsch.”

“I think it serves all of us (San Diegans) badly if that is the first impression of the city when someone arrives at the airport,” he said. “The prospect of having the Port commissioners exercise their own taste in decorating the port is a terrifying prospect.”

As for the future of the Port District’s public arts program, there is talk of using an advisory committee of laymen along with a professional “art consultant.” Davies called the use of a “non-educated” committee members that take advice from a consultant a “rocky road.” It would be wiser, he said, to hire a full-time professional or to tie in with existing local government agencies that have a public arts program.

Although over the years the Port Commission has placed thousands of square feet of concrete buildings on its property around the harbor, it has done little to improve the county’s quality of life by providing cultural enhancements. There is, for instance, no written policy that buildings erected on Port District lands set aside a certain amount of money for public artworks.

And, although the Port Commission underwrites three or four pops concerts a year in Chula Vista and at Seaport Village, it has no general arts program. Furthermore, the San Diego Harbor has no bayside amphitheater. Such a facility, if a suitable site were available, for classical, jazz, pop music or musical theater, would draw audiences that would provide spinoff business for nearby restaurants and stores.

Commission chairman Burk says the commission will not begin discussing its public arts program for a month or so. A permanent policy would be beneficial because of turnover on the commission. The positions of four members--Rick and Larsen, both of San Diego, and one each from Coronado and National City--are up for reappointment in January.

Meanwhile, no one is saying what further plans are being made for Port District artworks. Maybe the commissioners should commission portraits of themselves. On velvet, of course.