Public Art Review issue 04 - 1990 (fall/winter)

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Suzanne Lacy: Education of Public A r t i s t s

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ABOUT THIS ISSUE

Multiculturalism in Public Art

Public Art and hulticulturalism Life in haps more than anywhere else^n the world, involves swimmir ra vegetable soup or traversing a multi-colored crazy quilt of ethhl^cultures^ Artist^ are just begipningto a d d r e ^ the dichotomy of preserving the precious heritage of ancestors while trying to integrate people i j U a % ^ d e m v pIyraljb5tic ^ ^ i e t y S o ^ ' ^ The influence of many different cultures ^ evident in urban landscapes, outdoor sculptures, murals and community festivals. But how does public art speak to a multitude of cultural perspectives simultaneously? The term "multicultufdfsnf' h ^ been overused and triade trendy in recent years, but issues of pluralism, integration and racism will profoundly affect the development of American culture for many years. Public art, iu ail its diverse manifestation^has the unique opportunity to assimilate values inherent in our culture, assign meanings, and present compelling, passionate, and personal points of view. ] J With this issue of PAR, we exaiinine a few artists who have risen to the challenge, provide historical contexts for their efforts, and begin a new dialogue about public art that responds to the exciting and vibrant cultural diversity in America.

Michael

The Artist of Color and the Nature of Difference

David Mura

Notes Toward the Development of Multicultural Critical Forms

Patrice Clark

Edgar Heap of Birds Building Minnesota, a War Memorial

Jim Billings

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Public Art that Inspires; Public Art that Informs

Seitu Jones

8

Multiculturalism: Conversations with Public Art Sponsors

Laura Weber

10

Moira

11

Minnesota's Ethnic Murals

Several

2

4

Koelsch

Harris

6

Features Public Art in Prisons

Ron Glowen

12

Wrestling the Beast

Suzanne

Lacy

14

Book Review: Art in the Public Realm

Bruce Wright

16

Notes from a Mesa: The International Sculpture Conference 1990

Cathey Biilian

17

Reuieuis

Jack Becker

Special thanks to our friends and subscribers who supported this issue: Karen Bacig Lanny Bergner Jackie Ferrara Judith L. Casey Lindsay E. Fairfield Susan Fiene James Ford

Reclaiming a City's History: Biddy Mason's Place

Brower Hatcher D. M. Hinderliter Vaughn Klopfenstein Judy Kracke Therese Krupp Constance Mayeron Earl & Audrey Masterson

Barbara J. Morris Beth Moxley Juliana Poole Elizabeth Stanek-Ratts Shirley L. Wyrick Suzanne Zorn

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Declaiming a City's History: i she wrote, e to Los Ang The display of their histories has particul damental to capture itj because the expression of the city's rich cation of each de identifying I character. The organization later published a including the most importan place, and containing a description ot' if " location of Biddy Mason's homestead. evolved from a res idential plot on From the 1880's through the 1920's, the edge of the city to a site poised bet] the region's leading ente linment and shopping center on Broadway and its major financial district on Spr ig Street. While Broadway has continued to thrive by serving the city's growing Latino population, Spring Street, in contrast, has become a drab collection of visually rich but empty beaux-arts styled office buildings. Planners are now hoping its former vitality will be restored when the Ronald Reagan State Office Building opens next year directly across from the employee parking garage at the Broadway-Spring Center.

The site of the garage, however, is not just a place for housing cars. It also represents, according to The Power of Place, Biddy Mason's strong personal character and commitment to public service. As an early leader of the city's African-American community, Mason symbolizes their contributions to the economic and cultural development of Los Angeles. Her employment as a midwife marks the site as a place to recall service workers and women's traditional occupations. And as a founder of the city's oldest African-American church, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, she exemplifies the collaboration, cooperation, and networking that are essential for civilized life. It is in this context that public art had the unique role of "evoking the memory of the site's history."2 When construction plans for the Broadway-Spring Center were unveiled in 1986, an opportunity opened for The Power of Place to commemorate Mason with a multidisciplinary approach that has given new meaning to "collaboration" in public art. In addition to inviting Saar and deBretteville to execute the public art components, Hayden asked Susan E. King to design and prepare a limited edition book. Laid out in a large format, HOME/stead is a personal and moving portrait, combining King's own reflections on Mason's life, t j a j i u a i a kdLSjubik lliLi^x rubbings from gravestones at Evergreen l*W w t i i f 1 1 F W r l W K wf # l f * i f i Cemetery, where Mason is buried, and an historic text written and researched by Hayden and Donna Graves, Executive Director of The Power of Place.

Meetings of all the team members and the extensive research that Hayden and Graves did on Mason brought a conceptual unity to the entire project and shaped the content and character of the individual components. The research was also used in connection with two other parts of the project: a definitive study about Mason 3; and a poster, designed by When the new Broadway-Spring Center, deBretteville and written by Hayden, a parking garage and retail store complex highlighting Mason's role as a midwife. was dedicated in late 1989 in downtown Los Angeles, it included a two-part (A second installation sponsored by Section of Shelia deBretteville's "Biddy Mason: Time and Place." installation by Betye Saar and Shelia The Power of Place will also be a multiPhoto credit: Michael Several Levrant deBretteville that unexpectedly disciplinary collaboration. Artists Celia revitalized an ancient art form — the Munoz and Rupert Garcia will join public monument. architects Brenda Levin and Alison Wright, historian George Sanchez and urban planner/curator Donna Graves in creating Although monuments are places where art and history meet in the public realm, a variety of works that will recall the role of the Embassy Auditorium as a place for time, ironically, has been a hostile companion. A degrading mix of environmental political and union organizing of Latino workers.) hazards and vandalism has often stripped works of their original elegance and dignity.

And while the triumph of abstraction has now made their representational style appear An initial grant from the National Endowment for the A m allowed the Biddy quaint and archaic, the decline of a sense of history in society at large has undermined Mason Project to proceed quickly through the design phase. Additional support from the relevance and meaning of monuments in modern life. Monuments typically the NEA, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopmfnl Agency|i|e'fcrst African commemorate highly visible people, usually men, who were engaged in well publiMethodist Episcopal Church, the National/State/County Partnership, UCLA, and the cized events. Women, when depicted at all, usually are elevated and idealized into Broadway-Spring Center carried the public art pieces to completion. allegorical representations of either society's highest ideals or its deepest public The two installations are at once accessible t o t h r e i j S t ^ t i p d . i s p f a t e d from the emotions. surrounding city by their placement at the r e a r ^ . t i y ^ g e N d S i ^ e c l u s i o n will end, however, when they are linked to the pedestrfuflRnic on Broadway by the compleBiddy Mason's Place: A Passage in Time is refreshingly different. Memorializing tion of an adjacent pocket park named Igjplrof Biddy Mason, and to Spring Street Biddy Mason (1818-1891), whose home was located on the present site of the garage, by retail activity filling the stores ground floor of the Broadway-Spring it focuses on an African-American rather than a white, a woman rather than a man, and an ordinary person rather than a national or local hero. And rather than defining Center. But those who now visil^tmJBPret location are offered a reward usually her by a classical statement filtered through changes in aesthetic tastes, theories of missing from the typical public art piece— an intimate aesthetic experience. social history and urban planning were applied, uncovering levels of meaning about DeBretteville, whose p p ^ ^ ^ f f i a l experience has been in graphic design and her presence at a place in Los Angeles that a century of development has all but education — she begap c l ^ p ^ Yale's graphic design department this Fall after obliterated. heading the department of comunication and illustration at Otis/Parsons in Los Angeles — installation Biddy Mason: Time and Place, so the outline of This is the first in a series of interpretive installations sponsored by The Power of ; as an inviting surprise at the end of a long breezeway. Closer a woman s Place, a local non-profit organization formed in 1982 by UCLA urban planning examination reveals a slightly faded professor Dolores Hayden "to develop photograph etched in granite, taken new approaches to urban design, public when Mason was in her 50's, beneath a art and historic preservation."1 Believing heading, "Los Angeles mourns and that Los Angeles has a unique problem in reveres Grandma Mason." From this developing a sense of place, she tapped anchor point, we move backward sources at the State Office of Historic through time, as the work, composed Preservation and employed graduate like a book, traces along a black students in identifying nearly 40 places concrete wall Mason's rise from slave to where public art and preservation could property owner, public-minded citizen, represent the contributions of women and and highly demanded midwife. minorities to the city's economic growth.

" . . . a spool of threadpracissors, delicate bottle, and a bag to carry a midwife's paraphernalia recall Mason's employment and serve as a metaphor for women's traditional occupations."

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL WINTER 199015

Words, which hearken back to the inscriptions on traditional monuments, play an important role in deBretteville's concept. Bold headings, repetitively using the pronoun "She" as a reminder this is a work about a woman, divide the wall into chapters of Mason's life. Her life is further described in summaries written by Hayden and etched into stone panels. The text is supplemented with prints of the paper granting Mason freedom and her deed to the property where the garage is now located.

Reproductions of early drawings and maps of Los Angeles depict the context for her life.

But it is the impressions in the wall that have the most associations with Mason's presence at the site. Beneath "She walks to California behind a wagon train," a series of overlapping wagon wheels, each deeper than the next, suggests movement and the end of Mason's jourpey to Los Angeles. Further along the wall, a spool of thread, a scissors, a delicate bottle, and a bag to carry a midwife's paraphernalia, recall Mason's employment and serve as a metaphor for women's traditional occupations. Below "She owns land," a simple vernacular picket fence is an l afehitectura 1 reference to an era when Los Angeles was part of small-town America. Marking the division between public and private realms, this powerful symbol of home and family brings into sharp focus the bond connecting Mason's role as a mother with her service to the community.

The 81 -foot wall leads directly to Biddy Mason's House of the Open Hand.

Here, Betye Saar's experience as an assemblagist is evident. Instead of continuing the historical narrative, she filled her work with reminders of the nineteenth century and a time when Los Angeles was a smaller and more personal place to live.

A sepia-toned photomural of Mason sitting with a group of women on the front porch of the small house owned by her friend and neighbor, Robert Owens, faces out from a small, busy elevator lobby. The adjacent wood- slatted wall picks up the architectural features of Owens' house — the trim along the edge of the bottom of the roof, the clapboard siding, the picket fence, the shutters. By puncturing this wall with"Window of Memories" Saar brings her Nostalgia series of intimate collages into a public setting. But unlike the other works in the series, which appear unconnected to any specific place, the "Window of Memories" is integrated within an architectural framework that firmly ties it to this site.

It is also distinguished from most of Saar's other works by its connection to a specific person. (She was, however, involved earlier this year with another collaboration focusing on a specific individual. Zora Neale Hurston was commemorated at the Museum of Contemporary Art with a performance piece by Ellen Sebastian and by Saar's Sanctified Visions, an installation tracing the life of the distinguished AfricanAmerican anthropologist, novelist, and folklorist from childhood poverty through her adult interests in religion and spirituality to her return to f ^ e r t y in old age.)

Delicate objects are organized around a small framed portrait of Mason i displayed as if they are the memorabil collected from Mason's house. Contrast^ ing with the factual accuracy of deBretteville's installation, Saar's composition, like the conventional monument, is not literally true. Instead of actual artifacts gathered from Mason's life, the "Window of Memories" is an ensemble of objects, carefully chosen for

their associations with women and the passage of time. These mementos, reconstructing the period at the end of Mason's difficult life when she was living comfortably on the site, produces what Saar described as a "sentimental and dream-like image of Mason."

Part of Saar's design — the portrait, a spool of thread, a blue medicine bottle found during construction of the garage, and the picket fence at the bottom of the arm a common vocabulary with Jretteville's installation. Although the ees are the same, the language is k by treating the bottle as ers and uniting the Spool, sitting on the lower right side of \ window , with the rimless glasses on the opposite side, and then by combining them all with a faded laced curtain.

wallpaper, a fan, velvet cloth, a quilt fragment, and leaves, Saar replaces their midwife associations with evocations of Mason's warmth and generosity.

While different in spirit—deBretteville's exposition is cerebral and literal whereas Saar's portrait is poetic and emotional—each part complements the other. Together they are "site specific" because they go beyond an aesthetic dialogue with their physical surroundings: they evoke the meaning of the site with an historic dimension that helps make the city feel like a home. By creating this sense of place with a mix of traditional purpose, contemporary design, and forward-looking application, the installation serves as an eloquent testament to one of public art's most enduring and vital civic roles.

1. Dolores Hayden. Gail Dubrow, and Carolyn Flynn, The Power of Place: Los Angeles (Los Angeles, The Power of Place, 1985) 2. Dolores Hayden, "The Power of Place: A Proposal for Los Angeles," The Public Historian, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer 1988), University of California Press, p. 14 3. ."Biddy Mason's Los Angeles, 1856-1891," California History, (Fall, 1989).

Michael Several is a freelance writer, specializing in the public art of downtown Los Angeles.

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL WINTER 199015

E S S A Y

The Rrtist of Color f> the Nature of Differen

By

David

M ur a

I In October, Intermedia Arts Gallery in Minneapolis presented "Endangered: Art and Performance by Men of Color." The series included work by Essex Hemphill, Wayson Jones, John Metzos, Pedro Bayon, Innocent Banda, Sowah Mensah, J. Otis Powell, Seitu Jones, Peter Williams, Frank Bigbear, Sherman Fleming, Craig Harris, Mixashawn, and myself.

According to curator Alex Pate, this gathering represents a unique opportunity to the public: "When is the last time you scoped African-American men, Hispanic American men, Native American men, and Asian American men laying their shit up against each other's?" Pate sees male artists of color struggling to form their identities in a world which "begins with Ward Cleaver and ends with Tom Cruise — a world which creates no space for them." How does this reality affect their art? What does their work do to change their reality? How is this struggle different for men of color than for women of color? These are some of the questions Pate intends to address in this series.

A gay Black man like Essex Hemphill faces untold risks and ignorance, says Pate. When Hemphill appeared on Black Entertainment Television and spoke about his life and art, he got calls from Blacks who thought that being gay was a form of betrayal to the race. "But (Hemphill's] tongue is permanently untied," says Pate.

"And what he writes passes through the knowledge that everyone outside of himself will not love him and does not anticipate his work. This is the element of danger. The threat."

This element of danger and threat is there in the works of all men of color, argues Pate, especially in live performance. Live performance involves the physical presence of these men, a presence the culture would deny. After all. these are the bodies that the dominant white society tries to relegate to the reservation and the ghetto, to the colored sections of town. The presence of these bodies in the wrong places puts them in danger, and creates a sense of fear in whites . (The idea of a group of mixed colored men seems even more ominous, since the prospect of minorities uniting represents a greater potential for power.)

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

unspoken, desire of Japanese-Americans is to become white, to live exactly like white middle class Americans. The roots of this desire are many: the internment camps where Japanese-Americans were imprisoned for their Japanese ancestry; Japanese cultural attitudes which stress fitting in ("The nail that sticks up gets pounded down," runs an old Japanese proverb); the fact that whites have allowed and encouraged Japanese in this country to become "honorary whites" (as in South Africa); certain patterns of behavior which made us less threatening to whites, patterns which allowed one Nisei — a second generation JapaneseAmerican — to title his book Nisei: The Quiet Americans.

But the fact is that Japanese-Americans are not white, and one of the advantages of a performance piece is that I can bring this physical fact to the audience in a way I can't do with my writing. Slides and video allow me to call attention to media stereotypes and to place before the audience the faces of JapaneseAmericans. When I do a rap song titled "I Wanna Be White," or a country-western tune about the Japanese taking over America, I am pointing to and defusing the way racial stereotypes affect my life.

I am also countering the stereotype of J.A.'s as quiet and meek, as the objects, but never the tellers, of jokes. When I do a monologue about stereotypes of gooks and houseboys in American film, the resemblance and lack of resemblance between myself and these figures is But of course it is not just the bodies of readily evident to the audience; whatever their color, they must feel a higher level these men of color which makes their art of discomfort because of my physical different. Given the power structures in our society, given the fact of racism, there presence. We know that racist jokes are generally not told in the presence of the is a certain portion of almost any colored person's life that he or she does not reveal race they make fun of; they are told in secret. If they are not, the threat of to whites in everyday encounters. To retaliation, verbal or otherwise, is present. many whites, the art of people of color What does it mean when I tell these jokes seems scandalous because it publicly in public? reveals this secret life. This is a life that Creating a performance piece for this, whites feel shut out of, a life they fear. As series is changing both the nature of my a result, they often charge it with fragwriting and who I am as an artist. It has menting the culture, with creating a gulf between people. But that gulf was always made me more aware of my body, my skin, my ancestry, my race. The fear I there. Only white culture has never been feel doing this involves more than simply aware of it. When white critics make claims for artists being able to cross color entering a new form: I fear coming out of lines, their motive is not merely a belief in the closet, announcing in a new way, "I am not white," exploring who I really am the equality of artists, whatever the race. and what it really means to be a JapaneseThese critics also want to deny this scandalous inner life of the servant — the American. This fear marks one of the boundaries racism creates in my world. slave, the houseboy, the gardener, the goThe feeling is something I cannot seem to fer, the defeated warrior. make clear in conversations with white But the colored artist knows this inner

For whites, a tension is present when a colored man performs, that is not there when a white man performs. For their own community of color, the presence of these bodies creates a feeling of familiarity, a reaffirmation, a recovery from the white faces of the dominant culture.

When Pate says that these performances of colored artists will be different than those by Spaulding Gray or Karen Finley or Laurie Anderson or Eric Bogosian, I don't think he's just referring to differences in content. These men of color do not look or sound the same as whites; the cultures of men of color have ingrained within them different movements and patterns of speech. Their bodies represent a quite different instrument. It is the emphasis on this difference which makes their performance different from say, Jessye Norman performing Aida.

life exists. And to deny that inner life, to deny a gulf between the lives of colored and the lives of whites, is to deny the colored artist's very identity. It is to say that only the life he or she shares with the master is real. That the things he or she knows and which white artists are ignorant of, do not matter. All the colored artist can be is a pale imitation of a white artist.

In my own performance in this series, I try to examine the life of JapaneseAmerican males and the ways in which racism has affected my life. I have written both a book of poetry, After We Lost Our Way , and a prose memoir about a trip to Japan, Turning Japanese.

Both these works explored issues of identity. But developing a performance piece has allowed me to break certain habits of "good literary form" in order to look more intensely at these issues. For instance, a common, though often

FALL WINTER 199015

artists I know. My performance piece puts forward what these artists cannot imagine.

II The failure of "white imagination" is a topic most white critics are quite reluctant to explore. Despite the cries of certain conservative critics, multiculturalism has a long way to go in this culture. Proof of this can be seen in the analyses these critics make of multiculturalism. For example, under the guise of exploring our society's move toward multiculturalism, the New York Times recently featured an article by Richard Bernstein which subtly and not so subtly marshalled forth the harms of this movement. Bernstein's article, "The Arts Catch Up With a Society in Disarray," demonstrated how far many white critics are from understanding the worldview and experience of minority artists.

In the article, Bernstein quotes Arthur Schlesinger's remark that the melting pot has yielded to the "Tower of Babel." In a seeming effort to complicate Schlesinger's observation, Bernstein admits there is a necessary connection between "artistic matters and the harsh world of the streets, where things seem to be getting conspicuously worse." What follows is a litany of the recent racial cases which have rocked New York — the rape and assault of the Central Park Jogger, the incident in Bensonhurst, Tawana Brawley, the picketing of Korean grocers, Washington, D.C. Mayor Barry's drug trial. Through such a listing, Bernstein creates an unspoken association in the reader's mind: Minority artists find their sources in the violence of the streets; this is the main difference between minority artists and mainstream tradition. A further implication: Minority arts represent the angers and violence of the barbarians at the gate, figures of chaos and dissolution.

This is not to say that minority art doesn't focus at times on racial antagonism in our society. But when Bernstein writes of the crowds of blacks and Hispanics shouting "slut" and "K.K.K." at the prosecutor in the Central Park Jogger case, and then follows this account with a paragraph about Spike Lee's charge that Jews "run" Hollywood, and lumps these two incidents together as symptoms of the times, Bernstein is subtly trying to cloud the actual art which Lee has produced. In this rhetorical guilt by association, Bernstein has stopped talking about the work itself and ignores D.H. Lawrence's admonition to "trust the tale not the teller." Bernstein concludes that Lee works out of an "ethnically onesided" view of the world.

He seems to imply that artists such as Lee are working with the same narrow prism that white artists have been charged with employing.

Here we enter a current argument employed by conservative cultural and political critics. If things are supposed to be equal, then a white person ought to have the same rights and privileges as a member of a racial minority. If Lee can Mixashawn. Photo credit: Warwick Green

view things through the "narrow particular prism" of blackness, why can't a white filmaker do the same with the "prism" of whiteness? Why isn't it okay for Alan Parker (a white) to create a film about civil rights with Gene Hackman as the star and a film about the Japanese-American relocation camps with Dennis Quaid as the star?

And if Denzel Washington (a black) can play Richard the III, why can't Alan Pryce (a white) play a Eurasian?

Unfortunately, though, things are not equal. To pretend they are merely reinforces the status quo. Given the history of our culture, the narrow prism of whiteness has dominated the arts; minority audiences have seen infinitely more all-white movies than white audiences have seen all-black movies.

The opportunities for the average American white actor, Black actor, Hispanic actor, and Asian actor are not the same. John Lone, B.D. Wong, Joan Chen are not granted equal consideration with white actors for the roles in Six Degrees of Separation or Les Miserables. That is one reason why, when Newsweek listed the great actors playing characters of another race, not one of those actors was an Asian or Asian-American actor playing a white person, and why five out of the six were white actors. Invariably, when the subject matter ought to dictate a nonwhite lead, the story is changed. The show based on the work of Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles coroner, becomes Quincy and the lead role is played by Jack Klugman. Charlie Chan's sons can be played by Asian-Americans but never Charlie himself. The main lead in Glory is Matthew Broderick's Colonel Shaw; in Shogun, it's Richard Chamberlain's Anjin-san; in Biko, it's Kevin Klein as Donald Woods. White audiences, we are told, just won't see a work where all the parts are played by non-whites. But of course, non-whites have little choice; they will always go to see works where none of their own is present.

Invariably, critics of multiculturalism fail to point out any way in which their own cultural viewpoints might be "colored" by self-interest. Somehow they assume that they stand on the hard ground of fundamental rights, logic, and artistic precedent. They don't want to explore why they might find a white face or viewpoint more pleasing, more reassuring. They refuse to search for their own traces of resentment at the increasing presence of minority artists and art. When a minority artist acquires power, and real power such as Spike Lee or David Henry Hwang now have, are we to believe that whites don't feel even a twinge of resentment, don't hear a small voice in their psyches saying, "This is unnatural, this takes away from my power, there's now a smaller portion of the pie for me"? These critics of multiculturalism are quick to point out the demagoguery and self-interest of those who call for multiculturalism. But what about white self-interest? Or are white critics somehow excluded from this? And are they excluded because somehow their values are universal and ours are not?

And what about the fears of the barbarians at the gates? Critics of multiculturalism decry the loss of a common cultural identity and the rise of

what Charles Krauthammer calls a new tribalism. What these critics can't stomach is that multiculturalism points out certain political realities about culture, realities which were always there but which nobody admitted. And the reason why nobody admitted these realities was that it served the interests of whites. In an interview in Salmagundi, V.S. Naipaul once commented that he couldn't warm to the works of John Cheever, because he, Naipaul,is not a member of Cheever's tribe. I don't quite agree with Naipaul's logic here — I think our capacities to leap across tribal lines are greater than he seems to think — but I do agree with his labeling of Cheever's work as that of a particular tribe. If the Upper East Side reader of Cheever thinks of him as universal and I think of him as a member of a particular tribe, which is more accurate? Why is Cheever and not Spike Lee exempt from the tribal label?

Is it because tribal has the connotation of primitive, of "uncivilized," and we all know which of these two is the more "civilized"? It is this underlying logic which allows Chester Finn to call the new cultural movement a "Beruitization of American higher education." We all know what has happened in Beruit; it is a chaos fostered by those nasty, fundamentalist Moslems—the Lebanese Christians, Israel, the U.S., the Soviets, had no responsibility for what went on there— and this is what will result if we let these forces of multiculturalism in. Thus, racist metaphors take the place of actually thinking about how culture works.

The fact is that our society is changing. In California, the minorities will no longer be a minority by the year 2000.

By that year, only one out of 25 newly hired people in industry will be a white male. Sometime in the next century we will no longer have a white majority in this country. Minority writers, perhaps, are more in tune with these changes, in part because they do not fear them.

Early in this century, Henry James saw the Jews in New York as barbarian hordes, a threat to American culture.

Today, our Nobel Prize winner, Saul Bellow, a Jew, looks at Blacks and other minorities and sees the same thing.

Certain critics of muliticulturalism display an ignorance of the history of art that they purport to champion. They forget that The Waste Land frightened people with its "chaotic" movement and its fragmentation; today it is a classic.

What appears to be chaos in the eyes of whites may not be chaos in the eyes of this country's minorities. Multiculturalism is an attempt to describe what is actually happening in our society, and indeed, throughout the world. What arises from this attempt at description will, as Eliot has told us, be a new whole. Fifteen years ago, in Saul Bellow's novel, Humboldt's Gift, the title character was based on poet Delmore Schwartz. When Bellow describes Humboldt/Schwartz's marvel-

ous talks in the Village of the forties, he revels in the range of Schwartz's allusions—"Yeats, Rilke, Eliot. . . Babe Ruth to Rosa Luxemburg and Bela Kun and Lenin . . . Goethe in Italy, Lenin's dead brother. Wild Bill Hickok's costumes, the New York Giants . . .

Screen Gossip magazine . . . Mae Murray..." What Bellow is doing is providing a cultural literacy list for that time and that sensibility. In Maxine Hong Kingston's 1990 novel, Tripmaster Monkey, the main character, Wittman Ah Sing, is based on the ChineseAmerican writer Frank Chin. Here, when Hong Kingston describes Wittman/Chin's talk, she also revels in a range of allusions: "Malte Briggs . . .

Steinbeck . . . Kerouac . . . Mark Twain . . . John Muir . . . Carlos Bulosan . . .

[Relocation] camp diaries . . .Winter's Tale . . . Flower Drum Song . . . Buddha . . . Mao . . . Tu Fu . . . Gwan Goong . . .

LeRoi Jones . . . Whitman . . . Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Both of these lists would have appalled Henry James or T.S. Eliot, who had their own lists.

Whether either list is chaotic and in which list you may find pleasure and delight, has a lot to do with your ethnic background. I suspect that Alice Walker or Spike Lee or Gloria Anzaldua or Frank Chin are a lot less threatening, a lot less "other" to me than to Mr. Bernstein.

This is because they tell me something about who I am, about my condition as a person of color and as an artist. Far from representing chaos, they have helped me form a vision of the world that makes a lot more sense than the vision I formed when I constantly tried to identify solely with Emerson or T.S. Eliot or John Ford (much less with Warner Oland as Charlie Chan or Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto).

Mr. Bernstein writes with trepidation of the new orthodoxy, of the straitjacket of "politically correct attitudes" which has arisen with the movement toward multiculturalism. He quotes Robert Brustein, the director of the American Repertory Theater: "I think there's an atmosphere of fear abroad, where people are afraid to evaluate work correctly because they'll be accused of being antifeminist, anti-black, or anti-gay." Of course, there have been and will be abuses of multiculturalism in the name of political correctness, but I don't fear these things to the extent that Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Brustein do. They imply that before multiculturalism there was no "politically correct attitude" to take. This is, of course, a ridiculous assumption. The only difference is that at a certain point in history nobody labeled cultural attitudes which hindered minority artists as political. Such attitudes were simply the "status quo."

Power, whether in the arts or elsewhere, is most powerful when people don't recognize it, when people do not see its political underpinnings. Any time society attempts to shift toward a more equal distribution of power those who must lose some power to balance things always cry that the other side is being political. Only they who hold an unjust distribution of power are non-political.

I would suggest that Mr. Bernstein and others find it easier to criticize the less artistically successful works which have come out of multiculturalism than to recognize and understand the most successful of those works. It is always easy to denigrate an idea by pointing to those who distort or misuse that idea.

The best multicultural works come not out of a desire to adhere to some imaginary party line but out of the experience of the artist and those he or

she comes into contact with, out of an attempt to describe the world as it is, not as the artist might wish it to be. Every artist at every stage in history in any culture must face certain orthodoxies which threaten to limit his or her art.

There's a subtle undercurrent in Mr. Bernstein's article which implies that somehow minority artists are less likely than white artists to fight artistic conformity. Of course, Mr. Bernstein never states this openly, because he knows that such an attitude is patently absurd.

Mr. Bernstein's final trick occurs in the very last paragraph of his article: "The last thing needed is a cultural consensus, even a consensus dressed in the mantle of diversity." He implies that we are quite near reaching a consensus on multiculturalism. I can assure Mr. Bernstein that this is not the case, and 1 think any look at the actual percentages and profits in any of the arts would bear this out. One way to deny an idea whose

time has come is to say that that idea has already arrived and we need to move beyond it. Not only have we erased sexism, racism, and homophobia, but now we are under the power of women, people of color, and homosexuals, who control everything in the arts. This is a form of paranoia worthy of Jesse Helms.

There is an unspoken arrogance among white critics of multiculturalism: this arrogance refuses to acknowledge that minority artists and their so-called "narrow prism" may actually provide whites with a new knowledge of themselves and their society. White people may admit our experiences are different, but in the end, most whites still seem unwilling to contemplate and enter that difference, to admit the possibility of their own ignorance.

"History," Walter Benjamin once remarked, "is the tale of the victors." In a dialectical paradox, those who have been barred from the culture now find a new burst of energy in their freedom to finally tell the tale of those who have been left out of the history books and the world of art. Minority artists today are doing what artists have always done: re-encoding new areas of experience into art. If they feel an energy and sense of purpose that certain white artists lack, it may be

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

continued on page 9 FALL WINTER 199015

E S S A Y

Hotes touiard the By

Patrice

Clark

Koelsch

If we are ever truly to embrace multiculturalism in the arts, we will need to re-imagine the forms of criticism.

Criticism — as it is generally known and practiced — is the legacy of a European patrimony. It has traditionally spoken with the voice of authority: purportedly omniscient, objective, and capable of discerning universal truths and values.

Even in its more colloquial forms, criticism invites the reader to observe the rational processes of the properly educated, appropriately situated, implicitly privileged writer.

Visualize this familiar journalistic scenario in the pages of the Sunday arts section of any major newspaper: the seasoned senior critic allows the lessexperienced reader to accompany him as he walks through an exhibition. The critical voice is conversational yet edifying: this is what I notice, this is what I think about that, this work reminds me of another (better) work I saw in some private collection, etc., etc.

The experience is akin to that of a prep school teacher taking a favorite student on an educational excursion. (This approach is characterististic of broadcast efforts, too: a benign, well-groomed expert patiently guides the viewer to an appreciation of significant works of art.')

This kind of criticism is a remnant of the Anglo-American empiricist tradition with its emphasis on abundant and immediate sensory knowledge — the pure perceptions of the attentive and discerning observer. This is the epistemic niche of the connoiseur — the man sufficiently bred and educated to have exquisite taste.

This has been the traditional realm of the critic.

Can we imagine our genial guide as young. Black, female, and pregnant?

What if her mellifluous English suggested a Trinidadian childhood? We follow Kenneth Clarke into the hushed Sistine Chapel or Arthur Danto through the spiffy Max Protetch gallery because these men look and sound like the people we have learned to regard as knowledgeable. Even when they say "this is just my opinion," or "it seems to me," we generally invest their ideas with a greater weight than we do if the voice is slow and southern or the by-line female. Our assumptions about the class, gender, nationality, and race of the writer/speaker immediately affect how much credibility we initially extend to him or her just because of his or her position in the complex constellation of social relationships. (This, of course, includes how we perceive his or her position in relation to our own position in the constellation.

This is a point rarely acknowledged, but it is a crucially important variable.)

The critical tradition is Eurocentric.

Plato and Aristotle were the first Western philosophers to expound theories of art (and, by extrapolation, critical criteria for judging art). Our current idea of what counts as criticism has been influenced in varying degrees by Greek philosophy, Thomism, the Enlightment, British empiricism, the Romantic period,

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

and presentation. In the preface to his article, Gomez Pena reports that it was written after discussions with more than thirty Hispanic artists and cultural leaders. He becomes the conduit for the individual and collective wisdom of a culturally distinct group. Some quotes are attributed in the article to particular individuals, but Gomez Pena also includes remarks whose sources cannot now be identified. He simply states: "The quotes that appear without attribution are apocryphal statements found in the chaotic pages of my traveling notebooks.

I don't remember who said them, yet I feel it is important to keep them as quotes to emphasize the paradigmatic and consensual nature of the document.

Sections of the text will appear in different formats and contexts throughout the year including newspapers, magazines, conferences, art and political events, etc."5 (Italics mine.)

Gomez Pena's open letter addresses the inability of the non-Hispanic art world to break out of a limited and selfserving concept of multiculturalism. It is a critical document and it is a performance script. If we go back to the remapping metaphor, Gomez Pena transforms a local city street map into a three-dimensional topo with an audio cassette setting the pace for the journey.

As Dorothy told Toto, "We're not in Kansas anymore."

M U LTI CULT UIIflL CRITICAL FORMS psychoanalytic theories, Marxism, semiotics, and more recently, by deconstructionism, feminism, and "the new journalism." It is now time to engage in a Copernican paradigm shift and move from a fixed Eurocentric orientation toward emerging systems of multicultural critical interpretation and understanding.

Although part of this critical task will continue to involve documentation and description, the multicultural critic must cultivate a sensibility for the absent. One of the original and enduring methodologies of feminist criticism is to look for the gaps and listen for the silences. We must learn to see and hear what has been invisible and inaudible to us. This involves actually asking people whose race, gender, class, age, religion, nationality, ethnicity, sexual preference, physical ability, etc. are different from our own, about the process and meaning of their own cultural productions. It involves taking those responses seriously and being aware of our own inclination to interpret the meaning and value of artistic products as they satisfy our own expectations of what those works should be. (For example, Western dealers and curators of African art have tended to sexualize objects which are not at all understood to be sexual by their makers.

Thus objects meant for use in indigenous fertility rites are inaccurately appropriated by Westerners as phallic or erotic art.2) A more inclusive criticism will require mapping and remapping cultural topography. The goal here is not assimilation, but a rethinking of what must be marked and how it can be represented. 1 All multicultural workers (both critics and artists) will be producing work for more diverse audiences with

fewer homogenous assumptions and expectations. This is particularly important for artists and critics engaged in creating or writing about art in public places. Cultural workers in the more public arenas would benefit from reading widely in other disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology, in order to have a clearer understanding of the different contexts in which art is received. For example, sociological analyses of the reasons for art vandalism in various settings should be of immediate interest to people making public art; such studies will also help critics appreciate the social constraints on particular public places and thus articulate why a specific piece of art may be good art but not good public art.4 Finally, we need to create new forms of critical discourse. While feminist criticism continues to have a profound impact on the shape and content of Anglo-American criticism, it has only begun to investigate the possibilities for non-patriarchial, non-Eurocentric critical approaches. These new genres of criticism will engage with non-Western work in ways which are culturally and conceptually compatible in critical style and syntax. At this point we can only begin to imagine what they might be: perhaps polyvocal, perhaps percussive, perhaps antiphonal. Criticism might not always be a solo performance or a single genre. It may involve public performance and it may not be neatly separable from the art it engages. We need to be open to many possibilities, many practices.

An illustrative case in point: In "The Multicultural Paradigm: An Open Letter the the Arts Community," Guillermo Gomez Pena breaks with the traditional forms of critical authorship, attribution,

We must learn to see and hear what has been invisible and inaudible to us. This involves actually asking people . . . different from [us] about the process and meaning of their own cultural productions.

FALL WINTER 199015

1. A notable exception to this approach was the six-part series, "State of the Art: Ideas and Images of the 1980s," produced by Channel 4 in England. Sandy Naime and his collaborators Geoff Dunlop and John Wyver attempted to present a multiplicity of critical concepts and visual ideas on crucial issues and contexts of contemporary art (e.g., "Value, Commodity, and Criticism," "Politics, Representation, and Power") without resorting to a dominating narrative voice. The programs were judged to be too dense and too theoretical for broadcast on American public television.

Consequently, they have mostly been shown in museums or classrooms in the United States. State of the Art, a book based on the series, is available from Chatto & Windus in London.

2. For examples, see Primitive Art in Civilized Places ,

by Sally Price. University of Chicago Press, 1989. Price, an anthropologist, writes, "Some of my own field research has focused on calabash carvings whose appendagcd free-form designs are understood by almost everyone except the artists themselves as explicit depictions of coitus. It is also clear that sexual attributes affect an object's chances of being both collected and appreciated in Western circles. One Primitive Art dealer with whom I spoke in Paris volunteered that 'Objects that are strongly sexed sell weir." (p. 47).

3. "Multiculturalism" has become a buzzword in philanthropic circles and, consequently, many individual artists and arts organizations are developing "multicultural" projects without interrogating the monocultural assumptions and values of their own individual and institutional practices. The dangers of multiculturalism becoming this year's funding fashion are clear. Michele Wallace put it bluntly: "Is multiculturalism. as it is being institutionally defined, occupying the same space as 'primitivism' in relationship to postmodernism?" From "The Problem of the Visual in Afro-American Art," Artpaper, Vol 10, No. 1 (p. 15).

4. John Dorman summarizes some of this information in "Art Vandals: Why Do They Do It?", Art News, March 1987 (p. 102-109).

5. "The Multicultural Paradigm: An Open Letter to the Arts Community," by Guillermo Gomez Pena. High Performance #47, Fall 1989, (p 21).

Patrice Clark Koelsch is the director of the Center for Arts Criticism in St. Paul and writes frequently about issues in contemporary culture and the arts.

REVIEW

Edgar Heap of Birds: Building Minnesota:

actual settlers on the public domain"2, was bringing more white settlers into Minnesota at the same time that crop failures and government chicanery were devastating the Dakota Nation. Finally a crisis came when cash and vital supplies, which the Dakotas had depended upon since the treaty of 1851, were delayed. When they were told to "eat grass" until the supplies came, the Dakota rebelled and began several weeks of bloodshed in Central Minnesota that left 500 whites and an unknown number of Dakota dead. Colonel Henry Sibley, a fur trade monopolist, led the U.S. troops who eventually defeated the Dakota and drove most of them into into exile on the plains or in Canada, or to internment camps. The execution of the 38 Dakota prisoners was the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

According to "The Great Dakota Conflict" by Nick Coleman and John Camp, the prisoners were chained to the floor of their prison after their traditional Dakota dance had frightened the guards. On the day of their execution, they were unchained and their wrists were bound. At the appointed time, "Dakota women who had been brought to Mankato to cook for the prisoners began to weep and wail.. . . The warriors made the gallows sway as they grabbed each other's hands and shouted out their Dakota names.'" After a drum roll, a man swung his ax at a rope which dropped the platform's floor, hanging the HONOR warriors along four sides of a square platform. Most were hanged quickly, a few died more slowly. According to Wa-kan-o-zha-zha Coleman and Camp, "[a ] prolonged cheer went up from the Medicine Bottle crowds."4 DEATH BY In memorializing these warriors and the conditions which HANGING lead to their execution. Heap of Birds withdraws human traits NOV 11. U K . TORT SMELLING. MN • EXECUTION OHDER iSSUCO BY .

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES • ANDREW JOHNSON from Building Minnesota. Instead of visual representation, he uses written language. Color is reduced to primary red on

By Jim Billings stark white — the Dakota surrounded by white settlers.

Although the signs are three-dimensional objects which cast During most of last spring and summer, forty road-like signs shadows, the series of planes produces a form without depth. It is without organic stood in even beats head-height and shoulder-to-shoulder, along the Mississippi materials, and without curves — except for the broken arc.

River's west bank in Minneapolis. Through these ghost-like figures on two pole legs, Heap of Birds' broken circle suggests that only a fragment of the Dakota Nation Native American artist Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds memorialized the forty Native survives. At the time of the conflict, a man named Hehake Sake spoke about the Americans who were executed during the United States-Dakota Conflict of 1862. circle: "You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is Like visitors at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., Dakotas came because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everthing tries to be to honor their deceased relatives, sometimes leaving offerings. round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to Temporarily installed. Building Minnesota now awaits reinstallation at the Land us from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the of Memories Park in Mankato, Minnesota, a park dedicated to the 38 Dakota people flourished." 5 warriors hanged there. (Two others were hanged at Fort Snelling in 1865.) Building The Dakotas' circle has been displaced by the white settlers' square. The HomeMinnesota was commissioned by the Walker Art Center, in association with the stead Act sectioned Minnesota into square miles, then into quarter-sections. Fields, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and other historical and Native American city blocks, houses, and windows were squares. To Native Americans, the square groups. symbolized the curtailment of freedom - the shape of the prison, the reservation, the Spaced evenly. Heap of Birds' memorial forms a gently convex arc — a fragment gallows upon which the warriors were executed. of a circle. Each metal sign pierces the ground — Mother Earth — and bears the Heap of Birds uses the road sign in Building Minnesota and his other works. Signs name of a victim. Behind this memorial, a chainlink fence with barbed wire bars passed by motorists are a form of mass communication that, like television commeraccess to the Mississippi, as barbed wire came to bar access to lands in the nineteenth cials, inform, label, proscribe, order. Road signs often announce Native American century. Signs on the fence warn: "U.S. Property No Trespassing" and "Dangerous names which were appropriated by white culture but which retain little of their Area No Swimming." In many ways, this site symbolizes the displacement of nature original meaning. The use of such signs in this memorial introduces us to particular and Native American beliefs by European civilization. individuals and their fates, and reminds us that many such roadway signs carry equally At this site, where rushing falls once aerated the water, the Mississippi has been significant meanings. converted into a machine for power. Now polluted, the river meant purification and Juanita Espinosa, a Dakota woman who is thought to be related to one of the spirituality, and was a bearer of life to the Dakotas. The grain elevators of Pillsbury, executed warriors, attended the dedication of Heap of Birds' piece. "When I saw it, I Washburn-Crosby, and other grain processing mills surround this site. Nearby are the cried," she said. "It was like seeing my relative, seeing all of the 38, standing there."

Lumber and Grain Exchanges which "built" Minnesota from virgin lands. Asserting For her, and for others who visited the quiet arc, the memorial finally publicly that "It was the potential disruption of American commerce that cost the Dakota acknowledges and honors Native Americans who sacrificed their lives fighting for people their lives," Heap of Birds placed his signs in "the earth in the business zone their homeland. of what was once called the Grain Belt.'"

Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds honors the executed warriors in a simple way. But by Coming during the middle of the American Civil War, the Dakota Conflict peering beyond the surface, tensions appear. The square motif, loaded words, road of 1862 was the Dakotas' enraged response to the increasing pressure of white signs, and other associations of mass media, and the poignant placement lead visitors settlement. Because they were not recognized as citizens, Native Americans could into the complexities that led to the executions. By bringing us into these tensions, he not file land claims. Consequently, their hunting and fishing grounds were taken helps to mend the broken circle dear to the Dakota Nation. away. By the late 1850s, they were confined to a narrow reservation on the Minnesota River. In 1862, the Homestead Act, which sought to "secure homesteads to the 1. From an essay by Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds, published in conjunction with the exhibition of Building Minnesota, Walker Art Center. 1990 2. From the preamble to the Homestead Act of 1862, U.S. Statutes at U r g e , Volume XII. p.392ff.

3. Coleman. Nick and John Camp.

"The Great Dakota Conflict," St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch. 26 April 1988, p. 47.

4. Ibid, p. 47.

5. McLuhan, T.C., editor. Touch the Earth, a Self-Portrait of Indian Existence. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc. 1971. p.42.

Jim Billings is an art critic who is currently working on a hook about visual art and popular culture.

Hachiva Edgar Heap of Birds standing beside Building Minneapolis, 1990. Photo credit: Walker Art Center

Minnesota,

Seitu Jones' Tranquility Minneapolis, 1989.

Rise,

By

Seitu

Jones

I first saw the Wall of Respect in 1968. It was not listed on any official travel brochures as a must-see attraction, but it was a stop that many Black people made while visiting Chicago. My grandfather first showed me the wall; it was in the neighborhood where he grew up. It was a symbol of pride, pointed to as a ray of hope by residents of the South Side like my grandfather. Whenever I visited the Wall, there were always other African-American visitors there as well, coming to a modernday shrine. It became an outdoor museum, a declaration of independence from art center walls. Black patronage for public art at its best.

The Wall of Respect was painted by the Visual Arts Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture. It was a collaborative effort that featured the work of more than ten visual artists, photographers, and poets. The general theme of the wall was Black achievement and Black heroes. The contemporary mural movement began with this public artwork. The art historian Edmund Barry Gaither says that the Wall of Respect was also the "spiritual source of the Black art movement in the visual arts" of the 1960s and 1970s." Within two years of its completion, other Walls of Respect were created in African-American communities in Boston, Detroit, and St. Louis. This movement helped spawn the Inner City Mural Program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

What is most important about the Wall is not when and where it was created, but how it functioned in its community. It was completely self-endowed. The artists, may of whom went on to establish national reputations, donated their time and, with donated paint, created the Wall.

There was no money from the City of Chicago, from the Illinois Art Council, or the National Endowment for the Arts. The Wall of Respect and other similiar walls were created with the spiritual and emotional support of their communities.

Although I didn't know it then, I can look back and see the effect that the Wall had on me and my perception of what art could be.

What does public art mean in African-American communities?

What role or function does it have?

There are many answers to these questions, but for now, let us focus on three functions. Public art challenges and supports values and traditions; public art inspires; public art informs.

Public art documents our place in time by visually rendering issues, ideas, traditions, and history.

Through visual symbols, signs, and images, it identifies and comments on the challenges that affect us.

Public art can be a mirror we hold up to ourselves and a reflection of ourselves we present to the outside.

Unlike work displayed in museums and galleries, public art is a shared and common experience.

In the Harrison Neighborhood of north Minneapolis, local organizer Annie Young is using public art as a tool to inspire and transform the neighborhood. Harrison is 6 blocks wide and 2 miles long. Housing prices range from six figures to government subsidized projects.

Thirty-five hundred people â&#x20AC;&#x201D; white, Black, and Asian â&#x20AC;&#x201D; live there. Some residents have been there for more than 50 years; others, for various reasons, move several times a year.

Annie Young believes that public art "promotes the image of an improving neighborhood." Through five years of community art and beautification efforts, Ms. Young has collaborated with several muralists and the mostly Black and Asian youth of the neighborhood to create a new image for Harrison. She has a goal of creating at least ten murals along the main drag, Glenwood Avenue. Thus far, four murals have been completed and at least two more are being planned. Ms. Young admits that convincing some residents of the worth of public art is a challenge. Many would rather raise money to install motion detectors and institute crime patrols rather than supprt and encourage teenagers with paintbrushes. But Ms. Young remains convinced that the community supports her goals. The Harrison Neighborhood was awarded a Twin Cities Mayors' Art Award and an award from the Committee on Urban Environment.

Furthermore, none of the murals have been vandalized. When a community is proud of its art. inspired by it, and has a sense of ownership of the work, it will protect it.

If, on the other hand, a work is not well received in a community, the response can be quick and brutal. Check out what happened to David Hammons' artwork How Ya Like Me Now?, in Washington, D.C. last year. The Washington Project for the Arts (WPA), an alternative gallery and artists' space, commissioned the piece as a part of

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n

Tacoumba Aiken mural, Minneapolis.

Although I didn't know it then, I can look back and see the effect the Wall of Respect had on me and my perception of what art could be.

That Inspires: That Informs

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL WINTER 199015

som

m

r e -

Section of Wall of Respect. Chicago, 1967. Photo credit: Roy Lewis an exhibit, "The Blues Aesthetic."

According to Debra Singer, Director of Public Relations .'or WPA, the organization has a history of showing AfricanAmerican artists, and with each show has commissioned a piece.

Enter David Hammons, whose work has always been infused with equal doses of humor, social commentary, and charm to create works that challenge our aspirations and perceptions. Hammons is like Eshu-Elegba, the imaginative, unpredictable, and mischeivous trickster god of fate from Yoruba mythology, who teaches through challenge. Hammons is steeped enough in African-American culture and life outside the studio to be able to make critical analyses and comments on day-to-day life. He does this not only by challenging Western perceptions of what art is, but by challenging many of our own aspirations and dreams.

Hammons created a 14'x 14' head-andshoulders painting of a blond and blueeyed Jesse Jackson. At the bottom of the painting were the words "How Ya Like Me Now?" He said the piece was a comment on racism in a country that would have elected Jesse Jackson if he were white.

Minutes after How Ya Like Me Now? was installed in an African-American neighborhood, by an all-white crew, it was attacked by a group of Black residents with a sledgehammer. Most of the artwork was knocked to the ground.

This is almost the visual art equivalent of the legendary audiences at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, who booed uninspiring performers off the stage within 60 seconds.

This is not the first time that Hammons' work has been physically attacked. In 1988, he created a piece entitled Higher Goals, which consisted of a basketball hoop atop a 55' telephone pole on a vacant lot in Harlem. This was his comment on the often-misplaced goals of young Black men to become basketball stars. Higher Goals was cut down anonymously.

The salvagable portions of How Ya Like Me Now? were placed on view in the WPA Gallery. Jesse Jackson toured the exhibit and in People magazine he commented, "I'd like to see the pieces of the portrait stay â&#x20AC;&#x201D; along with the sledgehammer. They both represent the anger felt by Blacks." Through this piece, Hammons acknowledges the common reality of racism that affects us all, but challenges us to action. He was quoted in People magazine saying "part of an artist's role is to ruffle sacred feathers."

For many years, I have aspired to create environmental artworks that honor, inform, and inspire communities.

It is said that there are very few outdoor sculptures dedicated to Black personalities or issues. None exist on any stateowned property in the Twin Cities. I and others intend to change this. I have recently begun a collaborative work with five African American students, a writer, and a historian on a project about African American presence in early Minnesota.

The piece will be a temporary sculptural installation at Fort Snelling, the earliest fort in the region. The installation will honor Dred Scott and many other Africans-Americans, both slaves and "freedmen" who lived at or near the Fort before the Civil War. Dred Scott, whose name was later to become a rallying cry on both sides of the slavery question, was owned by Army surgeon John Emerson and lived for several years at Fort Snelling, outside of St. Paul. In 1846, Scott sued for his freedom, claiming that he had lived as a free man during his stay at Fort Snelling, and that the Fort was in free territory. In 1856 the case went before the Supreme

Court, which determined that despite living as a free man in free territory, Scott was still a slave and not entitled to the rights of citizenship, including the right to sue.

The sculptural installation will consist of a bench and 16 low-relief cast concrete pavers aligned on a north-south axis outside the restored fort. The pavers will be set into the ground to point to the four compass points, and will carry information and images of AfricanAmerican experiences in Minnesota. The bench, constructed of high density particle board covered with a protective lacquer, will be reminiscent of West African Ashanti stools.

My goal here is not to merely mark a spot but to inform and honor. Although this piece will not be placed in an African-American neighborhood, it could serve as a cultural beacon that will begin to draw African-Americans and others to what is an important historical site. It will be a space for information and reflection.

Sometimes there are very deep motivations for the art of AfricanAmericans. Witness the work of Tyree Guyton in Detroit and Derrick Webster in Chicago. A noted art historian, Robert F. Thompson, has coined the term "yard artists" for this group of artists who transform space not in any special scupture garden but in residential areas or even in back and front yards. Thompson and others have pointed to certain characteristics that are reminiscent of West African traditions. These yard artists like Guyton and Webster are motivated by tradition and spirit. What they are doing is creating a new criteria for Black space by drawing from existing tradition.

Derrick Webster, a native of Central America, has been producing art in his home on the South Side of Chicago for over ten years. During that time, he has created small sculptures from found objects, such as jewlery, stone, metal, and pieces of wood. He has also created several large sculptural installations surrounding his house, and creating an

atmosphere, t h a t " . . . recalls West African ancestral shrines," according to Regina Perry. His sculpture consists of figures, geometric shapes, and wooden whirligigs painted strong primary colors.

Ms. Perry says, "The numerous sculptures which decorate Webster's yard and home appear to pulsate with the vibrancy of African drums and African-American jazz." Webster creates on the beat of African-American culture.

In Detroit, Tyree Guyton has used vacant houses, vacant lots, trees, and the streets for his palette. Collaborating with neighborhood children and with his grandfather, Guyton uses discarded bicycle frames, suitcases, broken bottles, tables, and chairs to embellish his sites with powerful magic. The power and magic of his installations are so strong that they have reportedly scared away undesirables, including drug dealers and prostitutes. Guyton says his work talks to him. He describes his motivations: "I keep hearing beautiful music from it.

Every day I come out here and I listen to it, and study it, and it makes me see things I never thought I could see. What I love is the magic that I feel from it. It keeps making me do more." Here is a

public artist possessed by the spirit.

The works of yard artists, undeniably, are not always welcomed in the Black community, but it is respected. My point here is that art takes many forms and has many functions in a community. It reflects our values and dreams, and as our society is changing around us, it is changing, growing, and evolving. Artists like Martin Puryear, Beverly Buchannon, Richard Hunt, Tacoumba Aiken, to name a few, are forever changing our cultural and physical landscapes. New Walls of Respect are being created all the time.

Let us hope that these works continue to inform, inspire, and challenge us all.

Editor's note. While Seilu Jones was preparing this article. Tranquility Rise, a sculptural installation he had created for North Commons Park in Minneapolis, was destroyed by fire, apparently the victim of a turf war between rival gangs. Jones regrets the loss of the piece, saying that he wished it had been strong enough to withstand the negative forces that are tearing at so many African-American communities. He also reiterated his resolve to create artworks aimed at counteracting those forces.

Seitu Jones is an artist living in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Continued from page 5 because the minority artists are uncovering uncharted ground. Increasingly, artists of color are recognizing in each other a source of inspiration and support.

The focus on men of color in the Intermedia Arts Series "Endangered" is evidence of this change. In preparing my own performance for this series, I felt empowered by looking at my own issues within the context of these other colored artists. On a new and deeper level, I see I am not merely working on my own solo journey, but am part of a wave that will take the arts into the next century.

The new masterpieces will come, and they will not look like the old masterpieces, and the artists will not look like the old masters. Art will survive, and it

will change in part because the political and economic bases of society are changing. I don't believe art ever existed in an apolitical, purely aesthetic realm, and I don't think our being a bit more conscious of this fact need demean our art.

In fact, it might make it more adequate to the complexities of this moment. And if certain critics and artists find these complexities bewildering, perhaps they might listen with a more open mind to the art which arises from this complexity.

They may learn something.

David Mura is the author of After We Lost Our Way (poetry), and the forthcoming Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei.

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL WINTER 199015

Multiculturalism: - i ConuersatioDS uiith Public Art Sponsors By

Laura

Weber

to the arts; at $9,000,000in 1989, it is the second highest corporate contributor to the arts in the country.) She told an anecdote about a session on racism at the national conference of the Council on Foundations. Not noticing any other arts funders among the 500 attendees, she became depressed, and halfway through the session, she began to weep. "If this were an art meeting, we would be talking about 'cultural diversity', or 'cultural pluralism'."... Here I was in a room of social service and social change people and we're talking about racism. I've never heard anyone talking about racism at an arts meeting, except in anger."

Mayeda is a Japanese American woman who grew up in Minnesota. "I'm

"Multi-cultural." In the concluding decade of this millennium, the phrase has become ubiquitous. For example, here on my desk is an announcement for a workshop sponsored by the Support Center of Washington D.C., "Developing a Multicultural Workforce." Over there's a cover story in New Options titled "Multiculturalism Will Make Us Whole."

A regional representative for the National Endowment for the Arts says in a phone conversation that "access" is one of the current "buzzwords" of the NEA, an attempt to reach those who, in the past, would not know about the agency or would be intimidated by it. Or even look out on the street. A sign on a pole at a busy intersection in south Minneapolis recently advertised a garage sale: "Cool clothes, furniture, multi-cultural."

Why, after five centuries of domination and exclusion by Americans of northern European heritage of Americans from anywhere else, has "multiculturalism" emerged so insistently during, of all times, the Reagan-Bush era? Are reports of the death of the '60s mentality of expanded civil rights premature? Some days, after imbibing news that might include accusations of police brutality by the African-Amercian community of one city, statistics citing the rise of anti-Semitic hate crimes in another, and concern over the escalating percentage of Asian-American college students in a third, it seems highly unlikely. Yet it is during the ReaganBush era that post-modern sensibility, rejecting monocultural notions of "universality" in favor of fragmentation and diversity, has "trickled down" from theoretical art and literature journals to the agendas of public policy makers.

When I asked a group of public art administrators "Why multiculturalism now?" many answered "shifting demographics," referring to statistics that show a quarter of Americans are non-white. By the year 2000, the proportion will rise to one-in-three. Over the next 30 years, the number of non-white United States residents will more than double tto 155 trillion), while the number of whites w ill trying to get rid of these pretty notions of the same or decline. As New Options cultural diversity . . . It's not because I reports. "In 65 years most of us will trace | have a dark personality, it's because I'm our descent to Africa. Asia, or Latin living more with the consequences of not America - not Europe." talking about racism; that's really at the base of this. Until we're ready to struggle Robert Booker, Assistant Director with it in our most private moments and of the Minnesota State Arts Board, said then come together and be willing to that middle-class citizens are becoming appear naked, ignorant, and terrified, aware of changing demographics through we're not going to move forward." their children's public schools, traditionally seen as the route to Americanization "A lot of us talk like multiculturalism and upward mobility. "The reality is that is a whole new direction, but for people don't act until they see it. And centuries the most impactful public art now it's visible in the schools." Another has risen out of community and tribal indication of changing demographics, rituals," said Pam Korza, co-author and Booker feels, is the increased number of editor of Going Public: A field guide to arts organizations that focus on only one developments in art in public places and racial or ethnic group.

Special Projects Coordinator of Arts Extension Service of the University of In a keynote address to the AssociaMassachusetts-Amherst. "In the late tion of Performing Arts Presenters in twentieth century, it's artificial to discuss New York City in December, 1989, impetus. We have ignored our cultural Cynthia Mayeda, Chairwoman of the heritage. Public art is the most logical of Dayton Hudson Foundation, discussed vehicles or catalysts for dialogue because the changing composition of society as it is set into a community context." one of five challenges for the nonprofit sector in the 1990s. (Dayton Hudson Regina Flanagan, Percent for Art Foundation contributes 40% of its grants Program Associate for the Minnesota

State Arts Board said, "Public art is what makes it to the surface. It reflects what we see as appropriate for public space. It reflects which of these cultures has 'made it' to the surface."

Members of any non-majority culture in America â&#x20AC;&#x201D; whether that culture is racial, sexual, religious â&#x20AC;&#x201D; have always operated by necessity in a "multicultural" manner, with an awareness of the mores of the dominant culture (a necessity for survival) as well as their own cultures. The changing demographics have placed the shoe on the other foot. "Arts administrators are predominately white. The issues must be addressed at the policy level, and that has

Collage by Shannon Brady

"In the late 20th century, it's artificial to discuss impetus. We have ignored our cultural heritage. Public art is the most logical of vehicles or catalysts for dialogue because it is set into a community context."

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL WINTER 199015

to start at the level of decisionmaking," said Korza.

She outlined two broad areas of responsibility for public art leaders in the promotion of diversity. "First is the need to enable and encourage artists of color to work within their own systems. This means more administative staff and jury members of color." Korza said that it is important to include non-arts cultural leaders as part of the public art process "to increase the range of imagery and aesthetics within agencies that catalyze, support, and stimulate public art.

"Second, allow and encourage projects to happen within communities themselves. Judy Baca's Great Wall arose out of severe social needs and addressed itself to the need. Political statements of artists of color need to stay within their work, and not be compromised." In this respect, Korza said that artist-initiated projects that are not tied to a particular construction project need to be encouraged. She said that most public art arises from the "institutional area," making it less likely that artists of color

become involved or that communityinitiated projects occur.

Korza said that Going Public, which was published in 1988, emphasized a fine arts approach to public art rather than a folk and indigenous approach. This is not an approach she would repeat if editing and writing the book today, she said.

"The emphasis the book took on policy and process, de-emphasized discussions of multiculturalism and even of public art itself."

In Seattle, administrative changes are occurring in public art agencies. John Nagus, project manager for the public art program of the Seattle Arts Commission said "We're looking for more diversity â&#x20AC;&#x201D; aesthetic, geographic, and ethnic, and are reaching out to the disenfranchised. In reaching out, we must go beyond press releases. It must be an in-person effort, and include a long-term commitment."

The Seattle Arts Commission has been holding information meetings about their programs in the city's ethnic communities during 1990. The Commission also has made efforts to include nonwhites in panels that select public art. As one example, he cited a progam sponsored by his agency in 1989, the Northwest Major Works competition, open to artists in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia. Native American artist Edgar Heap of Birds was on the selection panel. "Two Native American artists were selected for the project," Nagus said.

Nagus also talked about the difficulties of attracting Native Americans, who have a history of continuing battle with public agencies, into public arts programs. "We are dealing with disenchantment in getting involved. There is a perception, which is pretty true, that the art world is a white, male province that has not previously been interested in other voices. Personal legwork and trust building are needed. Administratively, there is a lot to deal with."

That's one reason why the NEA peer panel review system is used, Nagus explained, although he said this model too is under review. (Peer review systems are widely used in academia, science, law, and other intellectual and professional occupations. They are meant to insure broad public participation in government decisionmaking and to provide expert advice to public officials on the award of discretionary public funds.) "It's expeditious to use peer panels," Nagus said, "yet that excludes large populations who don't have the expertise to deal with the process."

Nagus pointed to technical assistance to artists as an important service in opening public art processes to more people. He said that in Seattle, assistance is being given to artists so that they may assemble the most effective and descriptive slides, resumes, and statements.

The Minnesota State Arts Board (MSAB) has convened a Cultural Pluralism Task Force, composed of artistic directors, cultural leaders, artists, and funders from the Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and African-American communities. The Task Force has been meeting since Spring, 1990, and will continue for another year. At this point, Booker said, the members are still getting

to know each other and attempting to define "cultural pluralism." The Task Force will present its recommendations on reducing barriers to participation in the State Arts Board's programs for further action.

While the Task Force hashes things out, the MSAB staff has expanded distribution of press releases and other agency materials to groups and institutions that are already serving communities of color. The MSAB is also developing a folk arts program that identifies master artists in white ethnic communities and among people of color. With the Minnesota Historical Society, the MSAB is recording Minnesota Norwegian, Ojibwa, Mexican, and polka musicy, Booker says that (his is important work but eventually he would like to see the definition of cultural plurality expanded beyond racial or ethnic groups.

"Minnesota is made up of many cultures, ethnic as well as gay and lesbian and, I dare say, cultures based on economics. If we are talking about barriers to inclusion, these groups also have been denied because of their culture. There is much work to do. The Task Force is tending to focus on people of color. What they're doing is a starting point."

New Orleans, at the other end of the Mississippi River, is unique in America for its mix of peoples. "Demographically, the minority in Louisiana are white males," said Lake Douglas, Public Art Director of the Art Council of New Orleans. He described the city's heritage as African-American, Hispanic (including Cubans and other Caribbeans), Italians, Asian Americans, Vietnamese, Germans, Irish, and Greeks. The wellknown Acadians, or Cajuns, reside predominantly in southwestern Louisiana, by way of Nova Scotia and France.

There are also many Creoles of mixed blood.

I asked Douglas whether New Orleans has formal guidelines for multicultural inclusion, such as those Minnesota is developing. He replied that there are not, saying that such guidelines are not necessary in the city because even without them, one quarter of the board of the Arts Council of New Orleans are African-American, and six of 30 projects commissioned by the Art in Public Places Program are by artists of color.

However, when Douglas looks at the dollar amounts given to AfricanAmerican artists, he sees " . . . the percentage of Black artists is not as good as it should be. Multicultural artists are not as far along in careers or experience to be competitive in our projects. [It's] not because they are Black, but because they're younger." He said that this was particularly true of public art projects.

"I realized through conversations I've had that Black artists are not as savvy as other artists in marketing and pricing.

This is something we can help with. The Art Council can make direct purchases of artworks with specific communities in mind. [One shortcoming] we've had is finding out how to reach people. We've learned that we need to reach AfricanAmericans with different methods than other groups, by going to churches, radio stations, and publications."

Miami artist Cesar Trasobares, who resigned earlier this year as Director of the Art in Public Places Program in Dade County, Florida, used similar "special outreach" techniques when he directed the program. He feels that the best programs specifically include mandatory or voluntary guidelines to help commissioned works reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity of their communities.

However, he believes the whole multicultural issue is a subject for further thinking. "A Black artist working in the

Black community is too simplistic. It is not solving the problem. We each need to be understanding of the variety of cultural strands." The Master Plan of the Dade County Art in Public Places Program contains a section titled "Diversity." It reads, "Recognizing the multi-lingual and multicultural nature of Dade County's population, the Art in Public Places Trust shall promote diversity and pluralism in art in public places, which shall reflect as wide a range of expression as possible."

Trasobares points to a new direction.

When I asked him whether current concern about multiculturisai was due to progress in racial attitudes, he said, "Not progress as such. It's that the notion of "mainstream" is no longer a true or reflective metaphor. The "mainstream" has shifted to a series of streams and sources that reflects multiple ethnicities.

Also, this is reflected in a greater; awareness of arts as well as crafts. The barriers [between disciplines] have become fluid.'

Multiculturalism is becoming a catch-word, another hype," declared Jeanette Ingberman. She is cofounder, with Papo Colo, of EXIT Art in New York, an exhibition space thaLhas presented works from a "transculture" frame of reference since 1982, well ahead of the current concern. EXIT Art has shown work of a number of public artists, such as Krzysztof Woidczko, David Hammons, and Edgar Heap of Birds, and has sponsored public art projects of its own. such as a series of pictographic street signs by Ilona Granet commenting on the ways males and females relate in public spaces.

Said Ingberman: "This is another form of racism, of apartheid. Multiculturalism is a way of keeping everything separate."

When asked if it isn't a good thing for artists of color to have increased opportunity to show their work, she argues that special shows of "Asian art" or "African-American art" do not allow for the context of the work in the broader, hybrid American culture.

Ingberman feels that these kinds of shows are not "invested with a curatorial vision or with the same intellectual rigor that say, a show on Germans or Italians would be. And some of them are not curated well. There is more bad art because people are afraid to make judgments or can't make informed judgments.

"All of these artists grew up in America the same way Julian Schnabel grew up in America. As Papo says, my grandfather is also Man Ray, I read Nietzsche. The white community does not have sole access to European culture.

These artists are not Third World artists.

I've actually heard them referred to that way."

The EXIT Art approach is "to see culture in a different way. Not trying to erase differences, because differences are there." Ingberman says her dream is that "we stop thinking about race the way we do now. If the NEA wants to know what is obscene, it's categorizing people. All peoples are artists."

I asked Ingberman if she thought multiculturalism might be a fad. "Yes," she replied. "In the long run, I don't think it's to the advantage of artists. I'm afraid some of the artists of color may be eaten up and spit out by this framework. In 1990 we can't approach work in this segmented way."

Laura Weber lives in Minneapolis, where she works in arts administration and teaches American history.

Minnesota's Ethnic Murals By

Moira

F.

Harris

Minnesota murals honor its ethnic communities from the earliest inhabitants, the Native Americans, to the newest arrivals from Southeast Asia. Painted walls serve as reminders of the various cultures, experiences, and beliefs that reflect today's population. Ethnic murals re-open closed chapters from the stories of many cultures; they also cast a spotlight on current concerns.

St. Paul's West Side has long been home to the city's newest immigrants, from Jews in the 1890s, to Mexican farmworkers after the turn of the century, to Southeast Asians a century later. In the early 1970s, a community arts organization, COMPAS (Community Programs in the Arts and Sciences) began sponsoring mural projects there under the guidance of Armando Estrella, an artist who worked in the tradition of the great Mexican muralists. Estrella and other artists have created many murals commemorating Native American history, traditional Mexican beliefs, and contemporary life.

Earlier this year, COMPAS sponsored a mural inside the West Side's Neighborhood House to represent the area's newest group of immigrants: the Cambodians who arrived in St. Paul in the 1980 s. Their integration into American life has not always been easy. Added to the obvious problems of language and customs were economic resentments directed at all of the refugee groups from Southeast Asia.

Staff members of Neighborhood House thought that a mural project could help develop understanding. SueTabbert of the Khmer Youth Leadership Program suggested three artists to work on the Neighborhood House mural. Pisoth Pin painted it while Houn Sang and Chandara Ker helped with the ideas that would represent their community just as the earlier exterior murals communicated Chicano references.

Although murals showing contemporary life are not common in traditional Cambodian art, local Cambodians had already painted several murals at a summer camp. For three years the Khmer Youth Leadership Program had taken Cambodian teenagers to the Wilder Forest, north of St. Paul. Campers were divided into small groups which then tackled projects designed to foster the sense of community and cooperation that Pol Pot and his government sought to destroy. These groups painted murals whose themes and images then became the basis for the Neighborhood House mural, which is titled "Strength.

Suffering, Hope and Rebuilding."

"Strength" is the theme for the images on the left side of the mural.

Sunny, brightly colored scenes show life before war and genocide came.

People work in the rice fields, bring offerings to the temples, and honor their dead by placing small flags on mounds of dirt. A tall, saffron-garbed monk stands at the corner of these peaceful scenes. In the center of the mural is a map of Cambodia, included, says artist Pisoth Pin, so "people will know where we come from." Pin's family came from Battambang; the artist himself was born in Takeo.

The sky and the acrylic colors turn dark in the scenes of pain and suffering on the right side of the mural. Pol Pot, wearing military cap and red neckerchief, anchors this section of violence, just as the Buddhist monk guards the scenes of peace. Next to the face of Pol Pot are images of death and destruction: a suicide, a bonfire of books, the execution of a man at a public meeting by the Khmer Rouge, and a cave filled with skulls. The cave of skulls suggests scenes from the film, The Killing Fields, and was included, says Gilbert DeLao of Neighborhood House, so that "people would know that the movie was real."

In Pol Pot's reordered society everyone, able or not, worked. Those who asked for mercy were shot and some, expecting that fate, killed themselves before Pol Pot's men could act. A figure carrying an enormous rock represents the task assigned to small boys, says the artist. Daily each boy carried a rock as large as he could manage to a site over the mountains many miles away, perhaps to build a dam. An old and very thin man is shown carving tools or yokes for oxen while a row of men in black, perhaps the city dwellers who were known as "the New People," heads off to their labor.

Some members of the Cambodian community felt that showing the Pol Pot scenes was wrong. Those horrors should be forgotten, not painted. Others felt that healing and understanding depend on visual confrontation, so the dark episodes remain.

The final scenes, those of hope and the rebuilding of life, are large yet incomplete since they represent the future. In a high school auditorium two figures jump for joy on their graduation day. Light coming through the stage curtain represents the bright future. Next to the auditorium a multiracial group of students stands in front of a wall. Above their heads someone has printed: "No War," "We Want Peace," and "Help Rebuild the Children of the Killing Fields."

In a statement about the mural Pisoth Pin wrote "I want all of you to know and to pay attention to what kind of suffering we went through and what really happened to Cambodia." Through the mural and illustrations he did earlier for a student book, Voices over the Water, published by the St. Paul Public Schools, Pisoth Pin has shown what happened to his country. His mural, like others in the tradition of the Wall of Respect, speaks. What it eloquently says can bring about understanding and compassion if people will look and listen.

Moira F. Harris is an art historian, the author of Museum of the Streets: Minnesota's Contemporary Outdoor Murals, and a partner at Pogo Press in St. Paul.

11

Martha Schwartz's Jail House Plaza, King County, Washington, 1987.

Photo credit: Colleen Chartier

By

Iff art is a constructive and liffeenhancing force that can improve and elevate the quality and condition off humankind, then are prisons an appropriate place to make use off this fforce?

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

Ron

Glo

we n

It is a distressing fact of life that crime and its ill effects and consequences have weakened the social fabric our country.

Crime has strained the public treasury to such an extent that public funds have been directed away from programs of opportunity and welfare (schools, health care, etc.) to law enforcement, the judicial system, and incarceration. While an economic recession in some parts of the country has resulted in cutbacks in government spending, "law and order" expenditures continue to increase in proportion and amount.

In many state, counties, and cities, the largest and most expensive publiclyfunded construction is likely to be new or expanded correctional facilities. State and local government agencies which have public art programs linked to capital construction or expansion projects derive "percent for art" monies from these projects. These amounts are sometimes major financial windfalls for arts agencies â&#x20AC;&#x201D; $400,000 from a combined jail/courthouse/police precinct in Portland, Oregon; $600,000 from a county jail in Seattle; $1,100,000 from prison construction in Massachusetts.

But arts monies allocated to prison construction has become another flash point of public art controversy. The assumption that artworks are being purchased for prisoner cells and security confines with taxpayer dollars is especially inflammatory, given the public's concern with crime and punish-

FALL WINTER 199015

ment. State laws and local ordinances stipulate the inclusion of artworks in publicly-funded buildings, but this assumes the work will be publicly accessible and for public enjoyment. At the heart of the controversy is the argument that prison inmates are not a suitable or desirable "public" to receive works of public art. The philosophical rationales for public art programs and spending, from "bringing art to the people" and creating beneficial enhancements of the public environment to the historically-grounded role of government in the administration and preservation of high culture, appear to stop at the prison gates.

Incarceration is, and involves, the strict denial of certain social privileges and freedoms. On the other hand, incarceration is (ostensibly) a process that society uses to correct or transform socially deviant behavior into acceptable and productive behavior. The instances in which the experience of art becomes an issue of punishment or rehabilitation are probably rare. However, with the percent-for-art laws creating the perception that tax money for prisons (the vengeful punishment meted out by an irate public) is being spent on art. these statutes are being called into question.

Suddenly, art is a question of punishment or rehabilitation.

The ideology of public art is being tested by this controversy. Until now, no legislation or statement of purpose has ever exempted a segment of the public from receiving works of public art. The

moral and ethical objections raised in objecting to art in prisons are usually directed at the perceived audience for that art (prison inmates). Interestingly, this audience is demographically weighted toward ethnic minorities, the social and economic underclass, the undereducated and underprivileged.

These factors point up political realities to be faced in approving or denying publicly-funded art programs in prisons.

The question of directing large sums of money to acquiring art for prisons is a political hot potato. Just because a law allows an arts agency to spend these monies on art for prisons doesn't mean it is always prudent to do so.

The question of who exactly is the audience for prison art programs has been framed by detractors in the narrow terms of an inmate audience. The fact is that correctional facilities are becoming a more prominent feature of the urban landscape. The "Devil's Island" syndrome of prisons located far away from centers of civilization is no longer true.

In some economically depressed areas, new prison facilities have been greeted with some enthusiasm because they generate jobs and local revenues.

Among the high-rise buildings of downtown Portland and Seattle stand the aforementioned new jails (euphemistically described as "detention centers" or "correctional facilities") in the midst of high-volume traffic and high-density workplaces. There is a larger general public which is affected by the presence of urban prisons. There is also a support

and adminstrative staff within the prison who, as municipal employees, deserve to be included in the benefits of a municipal art agency's programs.

There are many rhetorical and political questions and ramifications raised by this issue, and some are worth examining in the larger public art context: What role does art play in a society? Is the experience of art a privilege or a guaranteed right? Who decides how and where public monies for art are spent? Who decides if an audience or circumstance is appropriate or inappropriate?

In the context of a prison population, one very essential question is: if art is a constructive and life-enhancing force that can improve and elevate the quality and condition of humankind, then are prisons an appropriate place to make use of this force? Some would argue no: the prison is not a place for providing society's deviants with "uplifting" experiences.

Some would argue yes: art's inherent restorative, rehabilitative, and civilizing powers can be harnessed to affect positive social change.

Successfully placed works of art in prison buildings are the result of careful compromise and adjustments of public perception. But such compromises and perceptions can be subverted. Recent negative publicity surrounding Massachusetts' plans to spend $1.1 million to "beautify prisons" has led to a proposal exempting prison construction from the state percent-for-art ordinance. In Portland, Oregon a newspaper columnist used this nationally-published story to attack local and state expenditures for prison percent-for-art projects, and managed to get state legislators to place limits on these projects. (So far, no law has been enacted, and the limits were only directed at the current budget biennium). A worst-case scenario has happened in Colorado, where a corridor and courtyard environmental work by Andrew Leicester inside a maximum security prison incurred the wrath of the state committee which oversees all state construction projects. The final work differed from the proposal approved by the Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities, but the agency suffered the consequences. Sweeping changes of a stridently political sort were made to the state public art ordinance. Most notable were the requirement that a state senator and legislator be on every state public art commission selection jury, and restrictions which made it more difficult for out-of-state artists to compete for commissions in Colorado.

In Massachusetts and Oregon, the false assumption that works of art would be purchased to decorate inmates' cells fueled the controversy. The idea is anathema to any prudent state arts agency, but the perception persists. In Colorado, the situation centered on the appropriateness of the artwork itself.

Elements such as crouching gargoyles and silhouetted female figures were deemed offensive. The work echoed the grimness and psychic terror of prison life, but it overstepped unspoken boundaries of decorum and compromise.

In 1980, when the King County, Washington, Arts Commission was notified that its percent-for-art allocation from the new county jail on prime downtown Seattle property would net them $600,000, that was more than the Commission's annual budget. Protests were immediately raised to oppose spending that amount on the new cellblock building. Seattle artist Andrew Keating was hired as a consultant to advise the commission about what kinds of artworks should be integrated into the building. But county council pressure

13

forced a reduction of the percentage to one-third of one percent, or $200,000.

This was further lowered to $165,000 and the project was scaled back to two exterior wall and plaza works and smaller "portable" works for public spaces inside.

Benson Shaw's ceramic mural of interlaced arcs went onto an exterior wall in 1984, and after many rounds of negotiations and changes, New York artist Martha Schwarz's plaza configuration at the main public entrance was completed in 1987. Her Jail House Plaza consists of a variety of two- and three-dimensional geometric forms in colored mosaic tile. No works were commissioned or purchased for interior staff or public-access spaces.

The Justice Center in Portland stands across a small park from Michael Graves' famous postmodern Portland City Building. Designed to house county courtrooms, the local police precinct, and detention cells, the building was constructed with government funds. Its budget called for one percent for art, and the locations for the work were to be stipulated by the architects. The building has a street-level arcade of shops and restaurants (the King County Jail is a resolute concrete bunker), and the major commissions were oriented to the street and the building facade. These included Walter Dusenberry's twin spiraling towers of granite, Liz Mapelli's decorative ceramic tiles under the arcade roof, and Ed Carpenter's large geometricallypatterned leaded glass window for the barrel-vaulted foyer. To go near or into the foyer of this building would not lead passersby to think they are in the vicinity of a jail. It was the multi-use and street amenity aspects of this building that received the art and deflected any perceptions of unwarranted expenditure of funds on "prison art."

But putting a cheery face on a depressing building is not what public artwork is all about. The trenchant problem of public art, which many of its practioners today have recognized and confronted, is the question of public accountability. This is not merely the "best art for the dollar," but rather an art that addresses and communicates with the site, the audience, and the intervening demands of both sponsor and client.

The Oregon Arts Commission and the Washington State Arts Commission have both used percent-for-art money to create residencies for artists in state prison facilities, and have involved inmates as participants in construction of art projects. Located in public access areas as required by state law, the works convey to the public an aspect of inmate

5^SfftjeSal

The assumption that artworks are being purchased for prisoner cells and security confines with taxpayer dollars is especially inflammatory, given the public's concern with crime and punishment. rehabilitation. A film animation project by the Animakers is currently underway in the state prison in Pendleton.

In Juneau, Alaska, sculptor Bill Fitzgibbons completed a project in 1990 for the Lemon Creek Correctional Center funded by the Alaska State Council on the Arts with percent-for-art monies. The outdoor configuration of pavings, plantings, and seating is a subtle and tranquil oasis, intended to be soothing and inviting. Fitzgibbons was helped by inmates in constructing the work; he in turn incorporated the various talents of his helpers in his design. The stone wall was erected according to an inmate's knowledge of such structures. The plantings came from the prison greenhouse. Intended as an open space for staff, inmate-visitor meetings, and trustee-inmate use, Fitzgibbons' plaza has become an integral part of the prison in several ways. It is, of course, a sitespecific work of art. But it is also a part of prison operations and maintenance. In fact, it is on these bases and not its merit as art that the prison superintendent gave the project his approval.

Fitzgibbons is pleased that his work will be maintained in tiptop condition â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not always a guarantee in any public site

or situation. But more importantly, his intent in creating a garden-like setting with subtle perceptual sitings and movements links the work to the tradition of Japanese informal gardens. The work is designed to act as an inviting, quiet place in the midst of a tension-filled environment. Thus, its main aesthetic goal is to induce behavioral change. It does more than decorate a grim environment.

Public art projects generated by new prison construction pose a number of politically-charged problems and intractable ethical and moral dilemmas.

Meeting these challenges in the face of a public already agitated about both crime and public expenditures for art will require more sensitive solutions and the ability to accept certain compromises. If the ideology and philosophy of public art can survive this trial, then it is truly a vital part of our social well-being.

Ron Glowen is an art critic based in Seattle. He is contributing editor to Artweek and teaches at the Cornish College of the Arts.

Martha Schwartz's Jail House Plaza. King County, Washington, 1987. Photo credit: Colleen Chartier

EDUCATION

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Allan Kaprows project with Lafayette Elementary School children consisted of drawing shadows on sidewalks siaewaiKS and a writing stories about the drawings.

Photo credit: credit Suzanne Lacy

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In his essay "Stalking the Billidn-Footed Beast" (Harpersy November 1989), Tom Wolfe poses the dilemma, and task, \ before writers today. Disheartened by the panoramic spectacle of a society more excessiv e and fantastic than fiction itself, writers have abandoned realism for a host of other "isms" and. refused to grapple with contemporary urban life in any meaningful way.

Wolfe exhorts writers to return to observation as primary source material.

He describes how Zola posed as a bureaucrat to go down into the mines at Anzin to research his novel Germinal.

One day he asked the miners how they brought the huge white plowhorse down into the mine by basket each day.

Shocked by his naivete, they told him that the horse was brought down as a foal

and would remain there, blinded by lack of light, until he died. This riveting fact became Zola's central metaphor for the miners'fives, one knowable only to the direct observer.

"Of oile thing I am sure," Wolfe continues, "if fiction writers do not start facing the obvious, the literary history of the second half of the twentieth century will record that journalists not only took over the richness of American life as their domain, but also seized the high ground of literature itself."

We might draw interesting parallels in the visual arts. Perhaps in response to the same issues of scale, visibility, and power that impel a literary surrender of territory to journalism, visual artists seem bent on "re-presenting" mass media imagery in accord with inaccessible theory and emulating the fantasy and mythology brought into vogue by science

artists intend to educate, rather than to addressing both the issue at hand as the nature off art itselff. This is a critical from mystery and toward clarifying 's intention.

fiction film genres. In today's art market, artists are imagemakers, trendsetters, and mythmakers.

However, in the past few years there has been a growing interest in art rooted in the facts, experiences, and problems of social life. The artistic protests of the Vietnam War in the late sixties were calculated to bring public attention not to the art but to the subject matter. Likewise during the seventies, feminists, ethnic, and community-based artists were working with subject matter of direct interest to a broad audience. During those ye«n-,a methodology specific to the issuesjbecame part of a more sophisticated practice combining subject matter, ihe substrata of social systems and institutions, and an increased focus on audience. Today, with the sudden arfworld "discovery" of multiculturalism and political art, the work of at least some of these artists is becoming more available to us.

The Increasingly Public Nature of Brt Public art, or the public nature of art, as a growth concern in the art world, is the result of a convergence of several factors, including percent for art programs, mass media, and the art market.

Recently, artists trained through studio practice have found themselves in confrontation with a decidedly opinionated public neither educated in art nor tolerant of much that passed unnoticed among more traditional patrons. Richard Serra's Tilted Arc was the most notable of many such incidents. The censorship debate around Robert Mapplethorpe and the current (as of this writing) congressional struggle over Judy Chicago's Dinner Party' would not have been possible in the media climate of the 1970's, but today serve the function of creating an ever-widening, though perhaps more questionable, interest in the arts.

As a result of these and other factors we have reached a unique point in art history where the central questions may

well be ethical ones. What is the nature of art in a complex urban setting; who sees this art; in whose interest is it made?

The visibility of art and the need to address larger audiences that are part of the aesthetic practice of the last three decades will place a larger burden to educate on the individual artists and the art schools from which they generally come. Are art colleges looking ahead to fulfill this growing imperative? Are artists assuming roles as educators to mass audiences? It is clear to anyone teaching that students and young artists are caught up in the desire to reach out beyond the art world. Between that desire and the ability to act effectively and meaningfully is a gap not adequately addressed, largely because so few artists teaching in schools have experiences from which to draw the information needed by their students. Students will need new kinds of skills to operate in the public sector, including how to create strategies of communication and intervention. More difficult to teach, yet much more fundamental, are the values and concerns that will yield passionate and committed work worthy of the public space it seeks to claim.

The City as Site, Art as Solution In 1989, the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) and the Oakland Arts Council joined forces to explore the relatively uncharted terrain of art "in the public interest," (to use a phrase from Arlene Raven's book2). The intent was to provoke dialogue by presenting ten artists and their work to different constituencies — artists, students, and the various "stakeholders" in the issues inherent in the art.

The City of Oakland was an ideal site for this project, the quintessential environment in which most artists live and work. In the city, ideals of pluralism conflict with those of national identity.

Multiple communities with their own languages live uneasily next door to each other. The rapid exhange of information and commerce has dissolved borders as rigid as the Berlin Wall. Notions of the self and the self in relation to others are in a state of flux. Increasingly, artists are called on to take account of these diverse experiences in works that originally were designed for a single class and race of viewer.

The City Sites Artists — Judy Baca, Newton and Helen Harrison, Lynn Hershman, Marie Johnson-Calloway, Allan Kaprow, Suzanne Lacy, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, John Malpede, and Adrian Piper — were selected for the strategies they had invented to address complex social issues through art. Most interesting, these strategies seemed to be an important aspect of the formal language of the work itself, deriving from neither exclusively visual or political information, but arising frorn an internal necessity perceut working collaborative^ with ency. These artists vgnrk at ijhB I _ contemporary p r a c t i c e j f e g J B m T i ^ f t ^ * opportunity to create new paradigms.

Their work includes v i < B M | well as strategic and analytic thinking as part of a fundamental skill for unj^Ef^nding culture and environment.

City Sites consisted of public lectures, private meetings with variouslj groups (called "pressure ties"), a critics' project, and a c | California College of Arts and < As the primary public event, eacl artist spoke on the models in their! from a different site in the city,' chosen to relate to the themes and intentions of the artist's work. They spoke to a mixed audience that included the non-art constituency their work

addressed. (A committee of volunteers worked for months beforehand, organizing in targeted communities to develop these audiences.) Newton and Helen Harrison, for example, whose work involves planning for ecologically sound environments, spoke from a restaurant in the developing waterfront area to an audience of architects, city planners, and ecologists. Marie Johnson-Calloway, whose work is linked integrally to the Civil Rights Movement, spoke from a small church in east Oakland to a mixed ethnic community including a number of -church members. Other artists spoke to audiences on issue-oriented work, e.g.

John Malpede on his work with the Los Angeles Poverty Department theater group to homeless people from the Unitarian Church Shelter; Mierle Laderman Ukeles on the crises in waste management to city workers from a garage at City Hall; Adrian Piper on racism to a mixed racial audience at a local blues club; and Judy Baca, translated into Spanish, on teenagers and art, to a neighborhood audience at a SpanishEnglish library.

In addition, "pressure point activities" were designed to give something concrete to the community, allowing the artists to apply their skills to Oakland.

For example, John Malpede did a threeday workshop to assist in local organizing of the homeless. The evening of his lecture, a community group offered a free chicken dinner to 150 homeless people. ; C many of whom stayed for Malpede's lecture. Judy BacI consulted with a aewly formed Latina art group on how to structure a board. Allan Kaprow created an event with 90 school children from an inner city elementary school.

The CCAC class was formed as an indepth "study group" for students who w anted to look more closely at the issues and forms of public art. At several points during the semester the students were treated to private discussions with the visiting artists, on topics ranging from racism in education to the history of California murals. Mierle Laderman Ukeles took members of the class on a tour of waste management plants in the area, and Lucy Lippard joined Newton and Helen Harrison for a discussion on ecology in art.

Class membership was opened to an equal number of CCAC students and Oakland artists. In line with the Oakland Art Council's interest in encouragbtig public art proposals, a group of practicing artists was identified and invited to be part of the class. The artists received scholarships for tuition by mentoring r CCAC students — jgjyismg thprri on life after art school, assisting theia)n tfrafft' final project proposes, and generally I bringing a level of increased seriousness » and professionalism tiaclas!

Educating

s

Little attention is given to exploring how to gather and assess information, how to develop a layered language that is accessible to defined audiences, and how to understand responses evoked by one's work.

the lack of elementary and high school art education to get worse under present funding levels for public schools, provoking greater disparities as art continues to become more public and accessible to an audience less and less trained.

For artists and students there are even deeper lessons to be learned f rom the specific strategies of theSS mature artists, whose practices are based in innovative responses to social problems. In the comparisdh provided by the scries, certain themes began to stand out. One of the most compelling is the instfttetive impulse at the heart of the work. These artists intend to educate, rather than to obscure, addressing both issues at hand and the nature of art itself. This is a critical shift away from mystery and toward clarifying the artist's intention. It suggests that artists may indeed be J"™* teachers through their work, and perhaps subject to the responsibilities of educators toward their studeotlk This would be an unusual way to k teach. Today, most art schools nurture the individual expressiveness of their g students, and indeed this is the wellspring from which the young artist must learn to draw. But little attention is givpn to exploring how to gather and assess ^B information, how to develop a layered language that is accessible fo defined audiences, and how to understand responses evoked by one's work. Even less time is spent Supporting students in their attempts to come to grips with the complicated'society in which they live and to formulate responsive ethical positions. In art education today, technical skills are not taught in any context that is pertinent to the informa* tion artists need to make relevant and meaningful art in an increasingly unavoidable public aren^

eries w^succes termsof community attpjion h m ^ visibility, but it was at mart«arfl|HaMong endeavor. JJnlik«1aan_v Such series that m geared for an art audience orWetusiv* ''tsKsadaudience,* City Site* was aimed at multiple and well-defined constituencies, from art students to the elderly. Developing educational models that reach various audiences is irjprasingly crucial as art becomes m(|fe public.

The censorship controversies the tip of an iceberg which is gr<^Bed in the growing lack of cultural l i t e | | | | p n our country. "To say that v i s u a l l y A education is not an integnsSffirt of the education system of our f i l e t y is a §|8ss understatement," according to CCAC president Neil Hoffman, "For example, ttfcre is not one art teacher in the entire elementary school systems of San Francisco and O a k l a n d . W c can expect

Educating the PTofessior

small gathering of critics from across the country met with local arts writers. They began to map the terrain of a criticism that would meet the demands of the work of artists such as those in the City Sites series. In the Spring of 1991, California College of Arts and Crafts will host a gathering of critics and artists working in new public sector forms. They will continue the task of identifying the critical language that will admit intention, methodology, issues, and results to the arena of aesthetic discussion. Such a language, coming in part from the artists themselves, will forward the educational process for artists and public alike.

In Tom Wolfe's essay on literature and the cities, he said that most young people make the decision to be writers not because they have something to say, but because they have a facility with words. Literary genius, they believe, is 95% talent and only 5% in the material.

But as they age, "the damnable beast, material, keeps getting bigger and more obnoxious. Finally you realize you don't have a choice. Either you hide from it, or IlKish it away, or wrestle with it. I doubt," says Wolfe, "that there is a writer over forty who does not realize in his heart of hearts that literary genius . . . consists of proportions more on the order of 65% material and 35% t a l e n t . . . . The answer is not to leave the rude beast, the material, also known as life around us, to the journalists but to do what the journalists*do,^r are supposed to do. which is to wrestle the beast and bring it to terms."

Editor's note: Parts of this article arc from a paper commissioned for the Sunbird Seminar by the Getty Center for Education in the Arts, May 1989, Long Beach, California. ^ 1. In the summer of 1990, Judy Chicago's Dinner Party installation came under attack by Congress. The University of the District of Columbia was the recipient of the installation, to be permanently displayed on its campus. Members of the House of Representatives took exception to the artwork because of its supposedly "prurient" nature and resolved to withhold funds the University needed to prepare^ th£ housing. As of this writing {September 1990) the Senate has yet lo discuss the matter.

2. Art in the Public I n l e t * R a v e n .

UMI Press, 1989.

3. Neil Hoffman, address to the Col icge Board on First

The City Sites artkts are motivated by ^social concerns as we^I as formal consideration! | n d mucn of tApir work constitutes ajgriKgiactthat falls outlidJ the purview of current discussion, one still d o m i J p t * sculptural issues.

Instead, these artists are evaluate?* l ® , l l N| acco|png to their media, and the specific uses Mformance, poilncal content of the issues they ''••eehcejituai'tift, and Veiling to explore s |0fdress. Or, they are seen as interesting uncial, political, ancflgersonal issues. She but idiosyncratic examples of conceptual, is currently Dean of Arts at political, or performance art. That is, art California College of ArfSand Crafts in and issues are not evaluated together.

OaktanMmr With the rise of interest in the public nature of art, however, there is a need to describe, analyze, and evaluate this kind of work.

At the end of the City Sites series a

.imtmr

PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL WINTER 1990 1 5

B 0 OK

REVIEW

Detail of collage in Richard Posner's Public Art Primer.

Art in the Public Realm ART IN THE ! PUBLIC INTEREST

HE LIBERTf ^ n u o e a r

weapons

SLITTING

By

Bruce

N.

Wright

We all know what public art is. It's the stolid bronze Civil War hero in the square. It's the abstract geometric form donated by the Rotary Club in front of the post office. It's the public fountain that sprays patterns in sync to music.

But wait a minute. What's all this we're reading in the papers about art?

With the recent controversy over the National Endowment for the Arts and the funding of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, our concept of public art begins to blur and recede. The days of plopping down a sculpture on the commons and calling it public art are long past. Communities and artists are demanding that art for public consumption be more responsive to social, political, cultural, and historical issues, and to local concerns.

Two new books can help us chart a more enlightened course through the murky waters of the changing public art scene: Art in the Public Interest, edited

by Arlene Raven for UMI Research Press (1989), and Intervention and Alchemy: A Public Art Primer, a limited edition artist's book by Richard Posner, published by the Division of Visual Arts, First Bank System, Minneapolis (1990).

The two books could not be more different in approach and outlook on the future of public art. Art in the Public Interest is a collection of eighteen writings on public art. Twelve are reprints from art journals, six are original pieces commissioned for the book. It is divided into two parts: "Art in the public interest: new public art in the 1980s," and "Art in public: conflict and questions today." Raven has assembled an impressive array of documentation, interpretations, and powerful statements by many well known artists and advocates of public art — a collection certain to change our understanding of the nature of public art today.

16 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

The first section has twelve articles by such important voices as Lucy R. Lippard. Linda Frye Burnham, Steven Durland, Phyllis Rosser, and Eva Sperling Cockcroft, among others.

Together they form a valuable reference to the range of public art, from the community mural movement and the guerrilla theater of Greenpeace, to performance and environmental works, and to milestones of important work such as Suzanne Lacy's Freeze Frame: Room for Living Room or the NAMES Project Quilt for victims of AIDS. The second section, with essays by art critic Donald Kuspit, Matthew Kangas, Carol Becker, Robert Storr, Michael Hall, and performance artist Suzanne Lacy, puts forward a number of provocative statements that challenge our definitions of public art and its role in society.

Two things become clear: according to the authors, there is yet to be agreement on the definition of public art, and there is near universal agreement that it needs to be accountable to local, regional, and national politics. In her thoughtful introductory essay Raven states, "Today there is no consensus about what public art should look like, or certainly about what a monument is. The public domain itself is more complex and less functionally stable than ever before."

The format of the book is notable.

There are supporting texts on half pages running throughout, amplifying the main text and helping this book to be a wealth of information and inspiration on how public art has fared since the creation of the Percent for Art program in 1966. It is clear from her choice of authors and topics that Raven believes public art since 1966 has frequently followed the path of social advocacy. "If advocacy/ activist artists and their collaborators," she wonders, "use as models not only traditional arts or community theater but telecommunications, scientific and anthropological research, art therapy and social work, have they crossed over to a new kind of social service or expanded the definition of art?"

There is the piece by Robert Storr on the Tilted Arc controversy — perhaps the first time since the depression and WPA art projects that the public was made aware of art's impact in shaping public

policy. Reviewing the events and causes that led to the removal of Tilted Arc, one has the scary feeling that it foreshadowed the NEA troubles we are witnessing today. "It is a reminder that when the interest of artists and those of a largely uninformed and hostile community collide, however self-evident the moral, social and aesthetic questions involved may seem, in practical terms the burden of proof will always fall upon art's defenders, as does the challenge to find not only the reasons but the language to make them intelligible to those for whom art is at best a decorative amenity and at worst an authoritarian imposition."

In "Hands across Skid Row" by Linda Frye Burnham, which describes performance work being done by John Malpede with the homeless in Los Angeles, the reader is made to feel at one with the protagonist of the story. The chronological account of the many attempts, successes, and failures by Malpede to involve homeless transients on Los Angeles' Skid Row and other artists in a collaborative process that was both social outreach and therapeutic balm makes us aware of the tremendous effort required to do what Malpede does. And of how far we still have to go (this piece was originally written in 1987).

Perhaps the most disturbing piece in the collection, and the last, is Michael Hall's "Forward in the Aftermath: When Public Art goes Kitsch." In a quiet but biting tone, he suggests that "the new public art may simply have evolved into a panstylistic form of kitsch." Citing the premise that postmodern art, (indeed postmodern society), necessarily traffics in appropriating ideas, strategies, and technologies, he convincingly states his case. Yet Hall ends on an optimistic note.

Only by paying careful attention to what we produce can we enrich the outcome of future work. "A tide of kitsch need not wash away public art's historic expectation to be both original and dialectical — and, in the process, to become (dare we say it?) beautiful."

Perhaps the most useful part of the book is its impressive bibliography. It lists 96 books, 60 catalogs, 26 reports or special publications, and over 200 articles related to public art.

In contrast to the overriding optimism of Art in the Public Interest, Richard

Detail of collage in Richard Posner's Public Art Primer.

Posner's Intervention and Alchemy: A Public Art Primer presents us with a roiling indictment of the present situation of public art. Posner, a public artist with works in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, has cogently summarized the recent history of public art in America and outlined a possible future.

Taking the rebus as his technique (where words are replaced by pictures) Posner has juxtaposed each phrase of his argument with a witty, often cute image that "illuminates" the phrase with additional meanings. Using this "deconstructionist" technique, Posner manages to take a five paragraph thesis and stretch it to book length. However, he does pose many provocative questions that stimulate one to think twice about the mechanisms we've created to produce art for public use. Without mincing words he states: "The dream of a public art bonanza has become a nightmare."

The artist, he feels, has been pulled into a bureaucratic quagmire that will take some doing to escape.

Unfortunately, Posner has cast his statements — indeed the entire book — in such a tongue-in-cheek tone that it is difficult to take him seriously. His cause is not helped by the fact the press run for the book was only 1,000 copies (a publisher for a larger second edition is being sought). Ultimately, a piece such as this with its many penetrating observations, has limited impact.

Bruce Wright is an architect and freelance design critic, and edits INFORM Design Journal.

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"CONFERENCE REPORT

Notes from a Mesa:

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The International Sculpture Conference 1QQ By

Cat hey

Billian

Rhiquiu-Santa Fe, Heuu Mexico, late spring I look up.

The last 5 minutes of daylight hangs on the mountain; I rest my pencils, and look through a brochure of panel offerings for the 1990 International Sculpture Conference. The density of environmental and public art topics for this conference marks an opportunity for me to trade in the nourishment of solitude for the perspective and context that intense peer dialogue provides. The momentum gained from sharing work extends and enlarges our discourse and ultimately, creative vision.

Washington, D.C., early June What is a conference but the potential to stretch ideas into innovative directions for action? At ISC '90, artists and arts administrators met and brainstormed a full gamut of visions for the future. It was an informal opportunity and a supportive, motivating atmosphere for defining values and airing frustrations in the world of public art. Our earth crisis has created a new level of global consciousness, and many artists â&#x20AC;&#x201D; public artists, in particular â&#x20AC;&#x201D; feel a need to redefine the context as well as the content of their projects. It's a time rich in potential for innovative work, sometimes fostered by unlikely and challenging partnerships between art and community.

Washington is a city dense in sculptural nationalism and history. Open vistas are the vision of French engineeer Pierre Charles L'Enfant and are enforced by a proclamation that keeps D.C. rooflines from usurping the Washington Monument's sentinel guardianship of the Capitol. A rather tasty piece of minimalism, if you ask me.

After a hiatus of eight years, the International Sculpture Conference has reemerged. More than 1200 artists, curators, dealers, academics, critics, administrators, and patrons gathered to seek a juncture and to participate in a moveable feast celebrating the diverse directions of contemporary sculpture. The sheer volume of over fifty panels, symposia, workshops, exhibits, artists' presentations, and informal meetings was both exciting, and unwieldy. My choice in this array was determined by a request from the Public Art Review for a personal summary not of the entire conference, but of those events which, as a public/environmental artist, I planned to attend. For me, three basic themes dominated the conference: the political debates about government funding of the arts; the imperative of opening the creative process to include society's input; the urgent need for public artists to articulate the integrity and vulnerability of nature in the face of global ecological degradation.

Given the heated debates being held concurrently in Congress, the media and among artists over government funding, censorship, and freedom of artistic expression, the opening keynote address, "People for the American Way," by John Frohnmayer, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was timely and closely attended. This was followed the next day by three back-to-back panels further exploring and amplifying these same issues. Many of us later wondered about the relevance of these opening topics for our distinguished, travel-weary guests. Indeed, international attendees to the "International Overview of Government Funding and Freedom of Expression for Artists" were quick to point out the provincialism of thinking that our current "local" NEA crisis was connected to the concerns that brought them to the conference. Their polite indifference to our preoccupation helped us refocus on art and the broader creative issues we all shared.

As in many conference formats, panels and formal programs were not so much the answers to our questions as they were springboards for lively discussion afterward. Some panels with ambitious topics fell short in revealing insights and theoretical depth. "Spiritualism and Ritual in Contemporary Sculpture" might have benefited from the inclusion of a panelist deeply grounded in both the theory and practice of living ritual, i.e., an anthropologist, theologian, or actual shaman. Other topics that at first sounded dry revealed provocative, underlying issues that approached the very core of artists' concerns for our real freedom of expression. For example, "Artists' Contracts in the Public and Private Sector" went well beyond "information" to address issues of artistic dignity and control of one's vision and career. This panel also provided thematic space for artists and arts administrators to contrast/share their respective roles and experiences on this sensitive topic. "Challenges of Sculpture Parks in the 1990s" was likewise illuminating. Moderator John Beardsley pointed to a future integration of those parks into urban development schemes and the potential for imaginative uses of "derelict sites" (landfills, abandoned mines, etc.), thereby drawing into creative partnership artists, local leaders, city planners, and urban-use interest groups.

What repeatedly became clear in pragmatic topics such as "Pricing and Negotiating Sculpture," "Commissioning Sculpture/Temporary Versus Permanent," and "Relationships with Foundries and Fabricators," was that there are no hard and fast rules but rather a diverse series of choices for constructing a form for professional survival. The support systems artists are developing range from gallery dealers and/or agents to a personal staff of consulting professionals, lovers, and friends who assist different aspects of a sculptor's career. An important addendum to the list of support systems was dealt with by the panel "Computers: New Tool or Electronic Gimmick."

Milton Komisar discussed the liberating aspects of 3-D systems as a time-based medium for pre-choreographing sculptural themes.

A major theme that emerged in panels and discussions was the need for open dialogue among individual artists, art administrators, and the larger community, to assure quality work comprehensible to a public audience. This was made explicit in "Public Art as a Catalyst for Community Involvement," and "Site Conceived/Site Specific," where Kit-Yin Snyder spoke of engendering faith in herself and her work from those who commission works, thus making them an active part of her art.

In a conversation sparked by this lively panel, Tonya Macneil, a San Francisco curator and arts coordinator, told me about Byxbe Park, al40-acre landfill project, where the involvement of politically active members of the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club had changed the character of the project. Jeffrey Schiff, in the ".. . Site Specific" panel, characterized "place" as becoming "site" when it is vulnerable to interpretation. We discussed the site elements themselves, examining possibilities that go beyond traffic islands and plazas, as well as the impact these can have on people who encounter public art where they least expect it. People do not arrive, as they do in a museum or a gallery, emotionally braced and prepared for an art experience. Public art enters the flow of life, offers itself as a bridge, and perhaps implies a responsiblity for the artist to speak with universality and eloquence. Unlike artists working solely from personal vision, those of us working publicly are faced with the formidable task of balancing our expressive vision with the exigencies of a broad and occasionally vocal community which commissions and becomes the stewards of our works. This democratic requirement of our art form requires us to embrace the community, to be willing to discuss, to explain, to listen, and to learn. The "aloof genius" role must be replaced by our becoming effective and dynamic representatives of our own medium, work, and vision. Jenny Holzer's proclamation on a Candlestick Park electronic scoreboard read: "Lack of Charisma can be Fatal."

The other more demanding and insistent theme which reverberated throughout the five days was that of the critical role public artists can play in addressing the growing despoliation of our global ecosystem. Of special note was James Wines' Environmental Address, "Green Architecture." He combined a moving and thoughtful overview of the global crisis with a sharp focus on the issue of human dwellings becoming responsive to the fragility of our earth. His talk was a clarion call for public artists to take the lead, to become bellwethers for urban society, to alert the public to the dangers ahead, and to reinvest in our view of nature as an integral whole worthy of awe, dignity, and respect. The panel on "Sculptors Addressing our Changing Ecosystem" struck similar chords with memorable presentations by Helen Harrison, a pioneer along with her husband Newton in environmental advocacy art, and Mierle Ukeles, whose work with garbage in New York City is an impressive reminder of our ability to turn the rejected and despised into the openly acknowledged.

Postscipt After days of intense verbal activity, I retreat to the studio and float to the edge of my imagination. Enriched by the conference, I again confront my perennial questions.

How to capture the spirit of the creative process in the completed vision of a public work of art? The rigors of committee decisions, rules, regulations, safety factors, contracts, personalities, and the rest of the deep sea of complexities that go with public projects seem to constantly gnaw away at the spirit of the work itself. But that's always the challenge: to extract the chancy sparks of enduring visual moments and create work that resonates with universal themes.

Editor's note: Tapes of many panels are available through Audio Archives International. Inc.. 3043 Foothill Boulevard, Suite #2, La CrescentaCA 91214; 1-800-747-8069. In addition to these tapes, a series of regional technical workshops is being planned to expand that very popular part of the ISC '90 offerings.

Cathey Billian is an environmental sculptor working on architectural projects from studios in New York City and Santa Fe. She is on the faculty of Pratt Institute in New York City, and is Artist-in-Residence for Ghost Ranch Museum, Abiquiu, New Mexico.

Photo credit: Robinson Lilienthal

Art works. FORECAST can show you how.

FORECAST Public Artworks is an enterprising nonprofit organization, expert in connecting artists and communities. Successful collaborations result in art that puts public space and contemporary artists to good community use.

Use FORECAST'S 13 years of experience in production, management and promotion of public art to help your city, corporation, organization, association, or agency bring art to the public spaces in your community.

FORECAST: 1990 PUBLIC ART AFFAIRS Minnesota Artists Selected: R & D Stipends

Public Projects

Romi Slowiak

Seitu Ken Jones

establishing a grass-roots organization to improve the aesthetic environment and provide accessible art experiences.

Laura Davis

preparing a video installation tribute to service workers and an inquiry into the question of "meaningful work".

Public Space Programming FORECAST helps public agencies, community groups and organizations integrate public art and design in public works projects. FORECAST also works with land and building owners, and corporate clients on planning and creating public places.

FORECAST assists by: • Advising communities on artistic, landscape and architectural opportunities • Building community consensus around historical, cultural, aesthetic and functional issues • Selecting teams of artists, landscape architects and architects to design public places • Supervising project construction and installation Current FORECAST Public Space Programming projects in Minnesota include: The redevelopment of entrances to Stillwater: a proposal to the Metropolitan Regional Transit Board to upgrade the aesthetics of mass-transit environments and infrastructure; a proposal to design, manage and install a sculpture garden in the Nordstrom Court at the Mall of America in Bloomington; and community forums on public art issues through Public Space Workshops.

Remo Campopiano

researching ways to go public, exploring ideas for public projects and establishing strategies for career development in the public sector.

Rosemary Smith developing LEADMAP project with the creation of a table top of sheet lead, stamped to depict geographic data and text regarding lead content in the soil.

collaborating with Inner City Youth League, African American artists, a writer and an historian, to create a memorial to Dred Scott at Fort Snelling, where Scott lived for two years.

David Pelto

constructing "Moon Arch With Kissing Booth" sculpture for a two-year installation on St. Paul's Harriet Island, including a stone hearth, stained glass moons, and a special "booth."

Susan Warner involving over 200 children on St. Paul's West Side to create a ceramic tile mural and bench responding to the ethnic heritage of its Southeast Asian and Hispanic populations.

Lyn Hambrick

pursuing an outdoor performance piece involving dancers and photographic murals which question cultural versus natural representations of the body.

• F O R E C A S T PUBLIC ARTWORKS

Exhibition Management FORECAST develops and manages local and national public art exhibitions, and has managed over 50 exhibitions since 1978. Our capabilities in this area include: • • • • • •

Assessing and evaluating available space Designing and producing exhibits Creating and producing catalogues Coordinating installations Repairing, packing, and shipping Managing tours - local, regional, and national

FORECAST currently manages ART OF THE EYE, a national touring exhibition of works by visually impaired professional artists, developed by FORECAST and sponsored by the Delta Gamma Foundation. FORECAST has also exhibited PROJECT REMBRANDT, a national touring exhibition sponsored by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society; and, THE NEW ACADEMY, an exhibition of art by undergraduate students from ten Twin Cities colleges and universities.

Competition Management FORECAST provides management and advisory services for public art competitions. FORECAST has assisted 15 sponsors in: • • • •

Matching formats to needs Promoting and marketing to artists Selecting and recruiting juries Managing communications, judgings and exhibitions

FORECAST was the professional advisor for the Minnesota Vietnam Veterans Memorial national open competition, co-sponsored by the Capital Area Architectural and Planning Board, and the Minnesota Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Inc. For More Information about FORECAST'S professional public art services Write or call John M. Walley:

FORECAST I PUBLIC ARTWORKS FORECAST Public Artworks 2955 Bloomington Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55407

612/721-4394

CAMILLE GAGE BILLBOARD (Photo: Jan Marlese) 1989 recipient Camille Gage produced 4 billboards in collaboration with community members and activists.

To receive a copy of the 1990 Public Art Affairs catalogue, send $3, plus postage to FORECAST: Public Art Affairs, 2955 Bloomington Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55407 (612) 721-4394 (allow ten days for delivery).

PliblicArtReview Public Art in Historic Districts The Spring 1991 issue of Public Art Review will focus on contemporary public art in historic districts. It will contain reviews and case studies of major projects nationwide, and will consider the criteria used in selecting and evaluating these projects. The issue will also contain book and conference reviews, and continuing coverage of the people, issues, and artworks defining public art today.

Proposals for Articles due by December 1 0 , 1 9 9 0 .

Releases and photos by March 1 , 1 9 9 1