Battle Over Balboa Park Art Continues

For years, city planners and special-interest groups have wrangled over Balboa Park, trying to determine what belongs in the park and what doesn’t.

For almost as many years, city planners and other special-interest groups have debated the issue of public art in San Diego, trying to figure out what kind of art belongs here, and what kind doesn’t.

This summer, those issues melted into one another as a handful of Balboa Park advisory committees discussed the city’s potential purchase and permanent installation of an artwork on park land. Roberto Salas’ “Night Vision,” a series of dynamic, vibrantly painted sculptures that mimic the format of traffic signs, was installed in February along Park Boulevard near the entrance to the zoo. It was one of eight works contracted by the city’s Public Arts Advisory Board for public sites to temporarily spruce up the town for the Super Bowl crowd.

Although the other seven works were promptly removed after the festivities ended, Salas’ piece remains an engaging addition to the boulevard.

“Because of the favorable response to the piece, the PAAB recommended its purchase and permanent installation,” said Joyce Selber, who directed the PAAB until it was absorbed last spring by the new city Commission for Arts and Culture. She now serves as Public Arts Administrator for the commission.

In November, the City Council will have the ultimate say on the $11,000 purchase of “Night Vision,” but, in the meantime, the Balboa Park board and its committees have gathered to cast advisory votes on whether the work is “appropriate” for the park site.

“Underneath the term ‘appropriate,’ we’re actually debating aesthetic preferences,” Selber said. “That’s what we’re dealing with, bottom line--different appreciations and different points of view. With art, that’s normal and makes for a healthy dialogue.”

The outcome of the discussions has varied from committee to committee, with several voting unanimously in favor of the work, and several others narrowly rejecting it after heated debate. Moving the work to a site outside the park boundaries has been suggested as one option.

“Our commitment is to keep the artist’s concept intact,” Selber said, “and to keep it in a site that respects the artistic integrity of the work itself.”

Though Salas originally intended to install the work along a stretch of California 163, he feels strongly about the Park Boulevard site, where most viewers will see the piece from their cars. The idea that “the auto becomes a museum, a gallery, a show space” excites him, he said, and has elicited much positive response. So much, in fact, that he is negotiating on a similar piece now with the state of New Mexico, through Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts.

If the City Council votes against the purchase of “Night Vision,” Salas will be discouraged, but he probably won’t be surprised. Early this summer, the San Diego Unified Port District rejected his and New York artist Vito Acconci’s proposals for artworks along the harbor after a prolonged and painful debate. Despite the strong recommendation of the port’s art advisory committee, both works fell prey to the port commissioners’ mistrust of contemporary art that challenges convention.

In the current debate over “Night Vision,” that same mistrust still lurks, unspoken, behind committee members’ concerns for the work’s “appropriateness.”

Salas, once again in the forefront of the public art debate in San Diego, recognizes the importance of his role.

“I feel like a pioneer,” he said. “Someone needs to break ground. There are plenty of people ready to make new proposals. We just have to get the people on the other end to loosen up a bit. It seems like they are just very afraid to take a chance.”

Not all cities are so timid. Salas recently completed a commission for the library of Alma College in Alma, Mich., having won a national competition for the project.

The people he worked with there were “supportive, they were prepared for me, and they were delighted with the work. Everything ran efficiently,” he said.

“They’re doing things right. It’s a wonderful balance against what’s going on in this city. Alma’s a very small town, with a small college art department, but they’re following through and taking pride in this piece.”

As San Diego’s “Year of the Arts” fizzles to a close, a City Council vote in support of “Night Vision” would be a vote of pride in local artists and a reminder of what the mayor’s proclamation was all about.