COMMENTARY : San Diego Port Needs a Vision on Commitment : The wealthy agency in charge seems to see its arts budget as a problem, not an opportunity.

The passage last month of a public art master plan for the San Diego Unified Port District should have been cause for celebration. It was proof that the port’s fabulously wealthy but stagnant art program was not dead. It was yet another first move toward spending the roughly $3.5 million that the Port District has accrued in its art budget since adopting an art program in 1982.

But instead of an exhilarated cheer, the passage of the plan met with only a long, tired, skeptical sigh. Port commissioners held back on any hoopla, and the public . . . well, its members know better than to applaud before the ribbon’s been cut.

The cause for such a lukewarm response was not so much the master plan itself, for it seems responsible and broad enough to encompass a variety of approaches to placing art on the tidelands of San Diego Bay, but rather a combination of past experience and present attitude.

When port commissioners rejected proposals for bayfront artworks by Vito Acconci and Roberto Salas in 1988, they did more than just pull the plug on two potential artworks. They undermined the system of selecting work that they themselves had established in refusing the recommendations of their own art advisory committee. A few years earlier, commissioners showed the same lack of faith in the artist Ellsworth Kelly. They accepted his proposal for an artwork but insisted on so many changes that Kelly eventually withdrew.

Both of these incidents seem to have left the Port District wary of further involvement with art, and that reticence shows in the way the new master plan has been both conceived and received. Rather than regarding their swelling budget for art as an opportunity to be savored, port commissioners seem to think of the money as a problem to be solved, an unwanted obligation. In their eyes, it has become an unwieldy beast that has grown and grown and now needs to be subdued, neutered. The port commissioners are looking for a safe and acceptable way to tame that beast.

The method they currently favor is that of shaving down the budget by acquiring “notable” works of art by major artists. Not an offensive game plan, but neither is it inspired. The best the city can expect from such an approach would be a bayfront dotted with bland but attractive sculptures by known quantities: a Henry Moore here, an Alexander Calder there.

What’s missing are vision and enthusiasm, as well as the courage to leap beyond the bounds of polite expectations and do something profoundly important with the money. Rather than lackluster cosmetic improvements to the land, the port might consider a broader, environmental approach. Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison are among the world’s most innovative artists addressing environmental concerns in urban settings, and they are a local resource. Why not invite them to make a proposal?

Rather than load the bayfront sites under the port’s jurisdiction with passive decoration, the port might also solicit proposals for active uses of the land. These need not be intrusive or interfere with the green space along the bay--they could complement it and energize it. The public art commissions of Battery Park City in New York could serve as an example of vital, truly interesting public spaces that exploit their waterfront location.

Another inspiration might be the Stuart Collection of outdoor sculpture at UC San Diego. The recently completed “Snake Path” by Los Angeles artist Alexis Smith integrates beautifully with its site while imposing upon it provocative layers of meaning.

Artists working for the port might move beyond the notion of static memorials and engage the history of the bayfront and the port’s own mandate to “promote commerce, navigation, fisheries and recreation” by creating a participatory, exploratory environment.

Another possibility would be to respond to the character and needs of the individual communities that comprise the Port District (Chula Vista, Coronado, Imperial Beach, National City and San Diego) and bypass altogether the notion of major landmark works of art.

Other options that might require some negotiation to fit into the port’s guidelines for spending money on art would be to help support local artists, arts education programs and arts institutions through a granting program. All three are starving now in the face of budget cuts--why not use the money as nourishment?

The port, whether it intended to or not, has lulled the city into expecting little from its art program. How refreshing it would be if port commissioners embraced their opportunity with vigor and spirit, keeping in mind the fundamental potential of public art to enrich the environment, to help the community grow and define itself, to address the past, present and future of a site.

Innovative and inventive public art can emerge from the port’s master plan process only if commissioners are willing to take some risks and savor the adventure. The next first step is for the port to hire an art coordinator with vision and then to empower that person to use it.