Public Art Review issue 06 - 1991 (fall/winter)

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E D U C A T I O N

Public Art:

Redefining Art, Artist and Spectator

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Thursdays January 9 - Feburary 6 , 1 9 9 2 What is revolutionary about public art? This 5-session course examines public art from the viewpoint of the artists and explores how public art has helped to redefine art, the artist and the spectator in late 20th-century America. Taught by Pat Benning, artist and instructor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Classes will be held from 6 to 8 pm in the Walker Lecture Room. Course fee: $71 ($61). Call 375-7622 for registration or more information.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen Spoonbridge and Cherry 1987-1988

Take a new look at the Permanent Collection Opening January 5. 1992 The reinstallation of the Walker Permanent Collection will organize works around six major themes. Three a r t i s t s — Nevelson. Rothko and-Artschwager—will be featured.

The new configuration of Galleries 4. 5 and 6 will give viewers a new perspective on favorite works, as well as a chance to see less familiar pieces from the Collection. Watch for the reopening in 1992.

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EDITOR'S

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he concept and form of "sculpture gardens," the focus of this issue of Public Art Review, can be as variable and difficult to summarize as the diverse natural gardens from which they take their name and metaphorical resonance. Just a few blocks from where I live, for example, the city of Minneapolis maintains a pair of gardens — one an ordered geometric layout of rectangular beds containing various annuals and perennials; the other, across the street, has a Japanese influence, with crushed stone walkways that meander over small hills and past islands of flowering plants and shrubs set in a grassy bowl.

Every summer, my friend's mother transforms her backyard into a showplace for roses — it's a modest space crammed with plots of rare rose varieties. And a few years ago, a friend and I tried our own vegetable garden: Our carefully turned little plot, so full of promise in June became, by August, a tangled ruin of craning tomato plants and overgrown cucumber vines.

Like these disparate conventional gardens, the sculpture garden (or park, if you like) comes in many different shapes and sizes. Design, content, location, "sponsorship" — all of these elements and more influence the way a given sculpture garden looks and feels. Guest editor Peter Boswell decided to use an array of different garden "types" to illustrate general issues surrounding the form. Rather than trying to document as many specific sites as possible, we hoped to create a kind of rough historical and contextual framework through which many diverse kinds of sculpture gardens could be investigated.

So our special section doesn't pretend to be comprehensive — we had to leave out many specific examples for the various garden types (including such excellent and interesting spaces as the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, Kroller-Miiller in the Netherlands and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England). But we do get around: to the rural expanse of Storm King or the urban oases of museum gardens in New York, Washington, D.C. and Montreal; through the ups and downs of the unique sponsorship arrangements in similar but contrasting projects from Minneapolis and Des Moines; out to campus collections on the West Coast and an intriguing attempted marriage of classical setting and contemporary work in Italy; and into the minds of a few garden artists with interviews of contemporary sculptors and a detailed study of one of the sculpture garden form's most brilliant figures, Isamu Noguchi.

Each of the different sites and approaches we've chosen has something to say about the evolving nature of the sculpture garden — about its mix of the natural and the artificial, about changing spatial and contextual expectations, funding processes, programming schemes. Like our simple (or not so simple) backyard plots, the form and content of sculpture gardens evoke basic kinds of human activity — planning and determination, growth and change, hope and aspiration. They dramatize not only our modern dislocation from nature and artistic beauty, but also suggest the dream of reunification, a return to the kind of paradise they propose, to the garden.

— Jeffrey Kastner Editor, Public Art Review

Garden Artists

Public Art Review

By Nason Diddle

Editor: Jeffrey Kastner Managing Editor: Julie Marckel Guest Editor: Peter Boswell Associate Editor: Judy Arginteanu Art Direction, Design, and Production: Shannon Brady Advertising Sales: Kathryn Nobbe Project Secretary: Barbara Heyen

The Uniuersity Garden

By Don Glouien

Editorial Board: Amanda Degener, Kinji Akagawa, Jack Becker, Cathy Billian, Fuller Cowles, Regina Flanagan, Kathleen James, Patrice Clark Koelsch, Cheryl Miller, Lance Neckar, Christine Podas-Larson.

Advisory Committee: Neal Cuthbert, Mariann Johnson, Lori Lane, Richard Richter, Rebecca Sterner, Gordon Thomas.

Public/Priuate Partnerships

By Chris Uiaddington J t ^ .

Published by FORECAST Public Artworks Acting Executive Director and Development Director: Jennifer Casey FORECAST Board of Directors: Fuller Cowles, President; Jennifer Casey, Vice President; Scott M. Nelson, Secretary; Ellen Valde, Treasurer; Amanda Degener, Diane Katsiaficas, Lori Lane, Pixie Martin, Mary Sullivan Rickey, Gary Welton, Jim Billings.

Ihe Noguchi Garden as Theater

By Glenn Smith

Printer: House of Print ©1991 Public Art Review (ISSN: 1040-21 lx) is published semi-annually

by FORECAST Public Artworks, 2955 Bloomington Ave. S„ Mpls., MN 55407, U.S.A. Tel. (612) 721-4394. Annual subscription dues are U.S. $10, ($8 artists) for U.S.A., $15 for other locations. Public Art Review is not responsible for unsolicited material. Please send a SASE with material requiring return. Opinions expressed and validity of information herein are the responsibility of the author, not FORECAST, and FORECAST disclaims any liability for any claims made by advertisers and for images reproduced by advertisers.

POSTMASTER: Send change of address to Public Art Review, FORECAST Public Artworks, 2955 Bloomington Ave. S„ Mpls. MN 55407 U.S.A.

Heui and Old in the Italian Garden

By Kimberlee Stryket

Listings: Opportunities, Classes, Bequests for Proposals

Public Art Review is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts; Cowles Media Foundation; Edith Rickey; as well as advertisers, individuals, subscribers, and FORECAST members.

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Public Art Forum R dialogue on Lucy Lippdrd's Nixed Blessings

examined contemporary artists whose work is informed and inspired by ancient ideas, designs, and rituals.

Because Lippard believes "the artistic process is, or should be, a process of consciousness," she has organized the discussion of the work by artists of color under six chapter headings, each defined by a gerund, because the gerund (from the Latin "to carry on") is the grammatical form of process.

Apt works.

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4 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL/WINTER

1991

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Editor's Note: his issue's "Public Art Forum" is an experiment in collaboration. The following essay was jointly produced and is based on the participants' readings of Lucy Lippard's Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (1990, Pantheon). It takes the form of an (electronic) conversation between the two authors, both artists and arts administrators in the Twin Cities area.

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By R e gin a and S e it u

Flanagan Jones

Seitu Jones: I remember reading an essay by John Edgar Wideman' about names. Wideman noted that names are very contextual and went on to describe how some of the students with whom he plays basketball call him "Doc" and how other friends that he grew up with call him "Spanky."

He said he did not mind being called an African-American writer, because that is what he is. I feel much the same way about names; I have been called an African-American artist, a St. Paul artist, an artist of color, and a con artist. Some of my relatives and the people from my old neighborhood still call me "Butch," and my daughters call me "Daddy." 1 respond to all of these names and they have their own context, but 1 do not want other people to refer to me by those tags. Each name is valid within its own context and I might not respond to that name outside of its context. In other words, as I learned growing up, "just do not call me out of my name."

In the first chapter (entitled "Naming") in her recent book, Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America, Lucy Lippard discusses how important it is for artists and people of color to name and define ourselves and our communities. Often seemingly neutral names from the outside are implicitly negative, and sometimes not distinguishable from explicitly racist name calling.

The book's content relates to rituals and circular paths that many non-Western cultures follow, and what Lippard explored in her previous book. Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory, which

Lucy Lippard (from Mixed Blessings): The first chapter is "Naming."

It is about self-naming and being labeled, about coming to terms with self-representation despite the shapeshifting identities most of us are forced to assume. The next chapter is "Telling," about history, family, religion, and storytelling. It looks back to where the intercultural process began and weighs the burdens of the past on the present.

"Landing" is about roots and points of departure, about taking place and being displaced. The fourth chapter, "Mixing," is about mestizaje, or miscegenation — the double-edged past of rape and colonization, the double-edged future of a new and freely mixed world. The last chapter is "Turning Around," about subversion and trickery, the uses of humor and irony by which subjugated people survive. The brief postface is "Dreaming," proof that the subject has no conclusion. 2 Regina Flanagan: A sense of wanting to understand more about work by artists of color led me to Lucy Lippard's book. As I leafed through it, the energy and vitality of the work leaped from the page. The source of this work is lived experience; it issues directly from the solar plexus.

Reading Lippard's book was invigjjjating. I found it important not only because it renders visible work by an abundance of artists of color, but because it recognizes the cultural sources that are the work's primary influences. She focuses discussion on the content of the work, rather than on its material or formal qualities, providing workable categories which establish a critical structure for analyzing the work.

As an administrator of public art projects, 1 have come to understand the vital role that art can play in the social context, frequently helping communities and individuals to recognize and define values. The work presented and discussed in Lippard's book often has similar social, political, cultural (and personal) goals. But while Lippard asserts that "art with spiritual depth and social meaning [by women and artists of color] is homeless in this society, trapped in an art world dedicated to different goals," 3 the sphere of public art is where this work could (and is) frequently finding a home. A number of

artists presented in the book, including Adrian Piper, Edgar Heap of Birds, Betye Saar, Houston Conwill, Judy Baca, and Alfredo Jaar, among others, routinely operate in an environment outside of the museum/ gallery axis.

S.J.: Although Lippard says in the hook that she does not intend that it be used as a catalogue of artists of color, or as a book about "the Other," my fear is that it will probably be used as such. The book is unfortunately one of the few in existence (and the only one of its size) containing so many examples of work produced by artists of color and brief cultural biographies, in many cases in the artist's own words.

So why is this book out there? It is not because artists of color have just suddenly appeared. Could it be that issues of cultural diversity and "multiculturalism" have become buzzwords in the art world, and that publishers realize that the time is right?

There is a danger that policy makers will use Lippard as a source, and not the artists and writers of color themselves. While Mixed Blessings is well researched, clear, and insightful, other voices need to be heard as well.

Why is it that works by white feminists about cultural diversity in the arts world have received wider acclaim than writings by people of color on the same subject? Lippard references the words and thoughts of Henry Louis Gates, Howardena Pindell, Michelle Wallace, and Lowery Stokes Sims, among others, all of whom have written on visual culture.

L.L.: Raymond Williams has pointed out that most of what we call communication is in fact oneway, or transmission. Risk is made much of in the art world, but the real risk, the real originality, is not just another twist of the picture plane or the creation of something unfamiliar. It lies in venturing outside of the imposed art context — both as viewer and as an artist, in and out of one's work — to make contact with people both like and unlike oneself. Perhaps the best that can come of postmodernism's shattering of modernism's mirror is the subsequent reevaluation of the artist's role in the reconstruction of a more multifaceted, just, and satisfying society. Here again, cultures excluded from the centers will have a potential advantage; much coalition work is being done between the various excluded cultures, and they know more about those occupying the center than is known about them. 4 SJ.: Lippard's book points out time and again that we cross cultural boundaries every day and often do not acknowledge them. We cross boundaries when we eat, when we talk, and when we turn on the radio. Lippard emphasizes that change is not an end point, but a continuing process, one of "decentering" and self-discovery. It is a process that will not always be comfortable or steady, but sometimes very rocky.

In my view, often when the term "multiculturalism" is used, what is really meant is "assimilation" — the assimilation of people of color into traditionally white institutions, and by extension into white society. This makes crossing boundaries easier and often painless for white people, while placing the burden of cultural diversity on the backs of people of color. The museum/ gallery environments need more than just the "browning" produced by hiring people of color— they need to participate in real power sharing.

R.F.: Power sharing becomes possible when people begin to listen to and understand one another. The significance of Lippard's book is that it develops a method of inquiry so that work by artists of color can be understood in context and on its own terms.

Lippard establishes a formal critical structure that can be useful in the analysis of works by artists of color, thereby expanding the_discussion of what constitutes quality in art. This effort not only gives us tools for analyzing the work, but also begins to establish a place for the work in the canon of contemporary art history.

In the street around Lorraine 0' Grady's "Art Is...

Afro-American Day Parade, Harlem. New York City.

"While Lippard asserts that 'art with spiritual depth and social meaning [by women and artists of color] is homeless in this society, trapped in an art world dedicated to different goals,' the sphere of public art is where this work could (and is) frequently finding a home."

— Regina Flanagan

But while Lippard's book will open minds, will it also open doors? I question whether the museum/gallery environment remains the only place where any artist's production can be validated. The work in Lippard's book seems too vital to be contained in an environment frequented by the predominantly white cultural elite. Some new cultural paradigms are necessary.

SJ.: Lippard acknowledges that a narrow definition of what constitutes "quality" in art has been used as a weapon to effectively deny people of color access or admission to the art world. This also applies to the world of public art. The process used to analyze works of art by persons of color portrayed in Mixed Blessings could also be used by sponsors and patrons of public art. It would also be helpful if the composition of panels and juries reflected the true diversity of the population. We all react to and see physical space through differing sets of cultural filters.

The nature and definition of publicart is in a continual state of flux. Public art will be even more dynamic and challenging in years to come, but also much more diverse. Read Lippard's book, and get used to it!

Regina Flanagan is a photographer and program associate for the Minnesota Percent-for-Art in Public Places program.

"In my view, often when the term 'multiculturalism' is used, what is really meant is 'assimilation' — the assimilation of people of color into traditionally white institutions, and by extension into white society. This makes crossing boundaries easier and often painless for white people, while placing the burden of cultural diversity on the backs of people of color."

— Seitu Jones

Seitu Jones is a St. Paul visual artist who works in the Education Department of Walker Art Center.

Notes 1. Wideman, John Edgar. "The Black Writer and the Magic of the Word," New York Times Book Review. (Jan. 24, 1988).

2. Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America.

Pantheon Books, New York , N.Y., 1990. p. 3.

3. Ibid., p. 11.

4. Op. cit., p. 195.

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Edgar Heap of Birds, "Native Hosts," 1988, six aluminum signs in New York City parks.

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he public art centerpiece of perhaps the most aesthetically successful airline terminal in the nation — the United Terminal at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, designed by Helmut Jahn and opened in 1987 — is the long underground passage connecting the main and satellite concourses.

Whether one walks or rides on the moving walkways, the passenger is transported to an otherwordly realm.

Blinking, multicolored neon ceiling sculptures, piped-in ambient music, and voice chants boldly combine to make what could be a boring or tense trek into a visually and aurally stunning, near-surreal experience.

While the art planners for the new Denver International Airport (DIA) certainly won't be reprocessing Jahn's vast glass-and-aluminum aerodynamically inspired "Terminal of Tomorrow" — Denver, after all, is not Chicago — its pedestrian tunnel evokes the sort of environmentally effective artwork they'll be building into the airport's design and operations: a symbolic celebration of form, function, and fun as part of a traveler's mythical, multisensory journey.

"I envision this as a model, innovative program because art will be integrated into the architecture," says Jennifer Murphy, director of Denver's nearly 3 -year-old Airport Art Program. "It's a new, different approach because the art won't be designed after the fact. It's not 'plop' art, and some people won't necessarily see some of the objects as 'art.' Nothing of this magnitude has been done before."

The unique journey to a new Denver airport hasn't been all smooth sailing. But despite public controversy, threats of financial downsizing (one local pol dubbed it "the incredible shrinking airport"), and a certain amount of uncertainty that it would even get off the ground at all, the $2.3 billion DIA — scheduled for completion in October 1993 on a 53-squaremile site 25 miles northeast of downtown — has finally filed a full flight plan and cleared the runway.

Former Mayor Federico Peiia's embattled campaign to replace the outmoded Stapleton Airport got a big boost last spring with a half-billiondollar bond sale; United Airlines' recent 45-gate commitment for hub operations also helped propel the DIA into friendlier fiscal skies.

The state-of-the-art aviation megaplex represents a public works project of unprecedented scale for the Rocky Mountain region. Not only will it play host to a projected 40 million passengers by 1995 (and be one of the world's three busiest airports by 2000), the DIA will also be permanent home to a $6.5 million state-of-the-art public art program whose scope will be unparalleled in the west, or anyplace

6 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

else. According to Murphy, it's the largest art-integral program to date in an individual facility in the country.

It's also the largest project to date in Denver arising from a March 1988 mayoral directive which mandated that 1 percent of the "hard" construction costs of major public buildings be for art. The city's Commission on Cultural Affairs (CCA), which heads the Percent-for-Art program, appointed the Airport Art Advisory Committee in January 1989. With the adoption of the master plan for art in the DIA six months later, a steering committee was formed to provide guidance.

One way the Airport Art Program promises to explore art for airports in new and unconventional ways is through its selection, early in the design/planning process, of a group of regional and national artist-consultants; the group advised architects on how to make the airport "art-ready" — how to create an environment suitable for the widest range of

While the art budget is a very small fraction of the DIA's cost, the master plan notes that, "no other single element has the potential to affect so significantly the visual experience of Denver for travelers and residents alike . . .The result will be the creation of a unique place, a memorable experience that will stir the visitor's imagination."

"I look at this in the context of the whole realm of services we can provide for the passenger," says George Doughty, Stapleton's director of aviation and an Art Advisory and steering committee member. "We have some very innovative proposals being developed. But I'm not into art that makes a heavy public statement. I categorize most of this as fun, as a sort of enhancement to the visual environment."

Doughty adds, "Denver has trouble with its identity. Is it a cowtown? Is it a financial center? Is it skiing? It's not easy to define. The art will reflect this diverse nature of Denver."

A cutaway view of the terminal building for the new Denver International Airport. (Drawings courtesy project architects C.W. Fentress and J.H. Bradburn)

Unlimited Uisibility Public art at the neui Dernier airport

artwork in the structure and systems of the building.

But, says Buster Simpson, the Seattle-based urban ecologist, outdoor sculptor, and DIA art consultant, "only in fairyland does an artist get hired with an architect. It can be tough when it's a blind marriage. Things have to be laid out on the table at the beginning."

Works in a variety of media (with an emphasis on materials native to the region) will be sensitive to overall themes of the indigenous landscape, a history of cultural diversity, water issues, and the idea of the journey.

Even floor designs and audio/video communications, for example, have been considered from an aesthetic standpoint. The program has also provided a wider venue for local artists, whose works will be presented side-by-side with the work of established public artists.

FALL/WINTER

1991

Airports are sprawling, bustling places. The passenger, while making connections from one transportation form to another, is either stressed or stalled or bored. The DIA will have an automated ground transport system (AGTS), subterranean trains linking the terminal and concourses. Since an estimated 60 percent of the DIA's arriving passengers will stay within concourses while waiting to change planes, the Art Program had to help offset these psychological circumstances. The combination of art and architecture can heighten expectations of travel as well as provide a soothing influence.

As San Francisco artist Anna Valentina Murch said in her proposal for "Sky Dance," a $340,000 volume light sculpture which will cast Colorado cloud formations and weather patterns on the main terminal atrium's controversial Teflon-coated

fabric roof: "On entering this vast volume of space, one looks up to see an abstraction of what one is about to fly through . . . Hopefully this ambient quality will help to relax frustrated travelers and give them an opportunity to contemplate their position in the atmosphere in a calmer and clearer way."

DIA art planners studied the successes and failures of airport art programs in San Francisco, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, and Chicago. Since the new airport's design won't offer "quiet discrete areas for viewing and contemplating works of art," as the master plan called for, planners crafted a vision: instead of "plunking" paintings and sculpture around here and there, as in a gallery or as an afterthought, artworks are being created specifically for the huge, harried, hi-tech airport environment.

They'll be directly responsive to its architecture, scale, building materials, systems, and technologies.

In a later phase, the DIA will have changing site-specific exhibits, installed for limited periods of time, a policy that has been a successful component of San Francisco's bellwether airport art. So far in Denver, over $3 million has been commissioned for a dozen permanent projects (out of at least 18) in five key areas: the main terminal (with an area of three square city blocks); three bilevel, 4,000-foot-long concourses; the landscape around the airport; the AGTS (which will have "tunnel vision" art); and communications (which will include sound and audiovisual art).

Though there have been some glitches in the past — regional artists grumbled about inadequate deadline notifications — the Airport Art Program has had a positive impact on the Mile-High arts community. About 70 percent of the commissioned artists are from the metro Denver area.

"We've been very conscious of the people who live here," says Murphy, a former coordinator for Denver CCA's Art in Public Places Program. "But a good combination of local and nationally recognized artists is better for the local artist in commissions of this size. It elevates their status because they get to work with [a more established artist]. They realize that maybe in five years, they will be that [established] person."

In addition to Murch's sculptural lighting installation, other works by veteran public artists include a $498,000 mountainscape water sculpture by Doug Hollis of San Francisco, and Vermont artist Michael Singer's $450,000 facsimile sandstone and wood Colorado landscape, for air travelers unable to go outdoors.

But the bulk of the DIA commissions have been awarded to local artists who have never participated in large-scale environmental projects.

Near the terminal's AGTS platform, Denver's Patty Ortiz is making a 140-

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airplane metal mobile and Boulder's Betty Woodman is creating a ceramic balustrade. In one concourse, David Griggs of Denver is doing a mock railroad-track sculpture connected to global maps by a steel arch.

Other local projects involve enhancing the terrazzo floors with inlaid designs that draw on native materials and themes. The artwork, literally underfoot, may not even be perceived by heads-up travelers.

Boulder's Ken Iwamasa and Jaune Quick-To-See Smith (who is based in New Mexico) are incorporating Arapaho-reminiscent designs in the terminal atrium floor.

Mark Villarreal, a Boulder abstract painter, and Carolyn Braaksma, a Denver stone sculptor, are teaming up to take advantage of the fact that the airport site — high plains prairie and farmland — was once a Native American meeting-camp as well as a teeming rainforest area. The artists are taking impressions of 65-million-yearold plant fossils found by paleontologists in runway excavation rubble, casting them in bronze, then incorporating them (with toy dinosaurs) into a 48,000-square-foot concourse subcore floor area.

They'll also use granite to inlay Ute, Arapaho, and Anasazi words and images. "We've been talking to tribal historians to get the images that symbolize their people best in a public context," says Villarreal. "We wouldn't get permission to use some of the religious symbols. We're trying to be sensitive, which makes our job harder. We don't want to get them upset. We're working to get something appropriate."

In another concourse, Denver artists Darrell Anderson, a figurative painter, and Barb McKee, a fiber and wood artist, are inlaying into the terrazzo a mosaic tile design of 40 culturally diverse human figures (10 on each subcore floor, for a total of 32,000 square feet). When viewed from an upper level, the foreshortened

figures will give the illusion of blending in with actual travelers.

"My experience is that the general public [moves slowly]," says Anderson, a former flight attendant.

"Hopefully, those with essence will stop and be curious. Then I've accomplished my job — breaking the stress factor."

As a first-time public artist, Anderson, like Villarreal, wasn't prepared for the politics, the compromise, even the logistics of highvolume foot traffic. "I'm not used to the bureaucracy of the city," Anderson says. "I advise artists who can't handle working with people — [be they] lawyers, architects, city officials, tile contractors — to forget it. The architect makes line A to line B, and then we come along and put a squiggle in it. I'm in charge to some degree, but all this is something I had to stumble on. The bottom line is that you're an artist, and you make sure your concentration is directed toward doing wonderful art that will stand the test of time."

Airport Art Program director Murphy concurs. "You're dealing with things that are so mechanical, like meeting code requirements, or looking at liability issues. The art has to stand up to the same kind of scrutiny that architects' work does.

People will be walking on these floors — will they trip on them? It's been difficult to bring [the artists] into a reality check."

DIA art programmers had tried to preempt a potentially frictional artistarchitect relationship by contracting an artist-design team of 13 siteselection consultants in the program's initial phase. (Two were added halfway through the process to counter criticism that there wasn't enough Denver and/or ethnic representation). Western painters, sculptors, and installation artists collaborated with airport architects, engineers, design consultants, and project managers to identify and develop

areas for the incorporation of artwork.

While one of the criteria for selecting artist-consultants was the "chutzpah to stand up to the architects," Seattle's Buster Simpson felt that there could have been a more constructive dialogue with the builders.

"You always start out optimistic," he says, "and then the reality of budgets and architects, egos, can become a problem. Then things get weird and it's hard to have something gracefully evolve. Sometimes it's hard [for architects] to be open and jam with other people, and they're not upfront with you. They're used to contracts, and if something's not convenient, they're not going to work with it. But Denver's never done this before. It's a process that's new to them."

Simpson cites as one "political" example how Fentress (the DIA's lead architects) "sprang" the translucent, tent-like terminal roof on the artistdesign team, after they'd already spent months proposing areas of artist involvement in the original steel-andglass pyramid-style structure. Yet Simpson and outdoor sculptors Sherry Wiggins of Boulder and New Mexico's Luis Jiminez have been able to "push the envelope" with the airport's landscape designers, DHMCivitas. They're tentatively working to create a wastewater-reclaiming "high Zen, western plains-heightened bonsai garden" landscape, with art features like a carousel, a large-scale horse piece, and safeguarded farm artifacts, all in a panorama centering on Pike's Peak.

"It's an ongoing battle," says Murphy. "Architects are reluctant to give up their designs. Even though artists came in early, sometimes it wasn't early enough. You have to know when to give up, and when something is important enough to fight for."

consultant with an "us-and-them attitude" that architects "should be grateful we're there to begin with") is another one of the few artist-design team members to get commissioned.

He's doing pre-programmed audio announcements in the concourses and AGTS cars, and door opening and closing signals (door chimes) in the AGTS cars, too.

"Airports are anxiety-producing places, and you don't want to confuse people," says Green. "Sound doesn't have to be so serious — it's an area that needs playfulness, humor, fun, a human connection. By keeping it informal but functional, you can catch people off-guard, lighten up their moods and remove separateness."

He has proposed chiming familiar westem-theme song passages as signal cues for different train stops, and using "sexier, softer, human, friendly" voices — even children, a yodeler, and a twangy country-andwestern voice — for information purposes. After all, Green, like other DIA artists, will have a captive audience.

"It's important, especially in an airport, that art serves both the public and art," he says. "There's trouble if it goes too far either way. You don't have to be Barry Manilow."

Green, a Minnesota native, has yet to experience the cosmic underground sound-and-light show at Chicago O'Hare Airport's Terminal One. But he and millions of others may never have to: As an ultramodern, conceptual showplace for fun and functional art, as well as an international gateway to the New West, the DIA just could eclipse O'Hare's claim as "The Aviation Gateway to the 21st Century."

Jeff Huebner is a free-lance writer in Chicago with a special interest in public art.

Boulder sound artist Jim Green (who says he didn't come in as a

7 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL/WINTER

1991

"Corporate Head," by Terry Allen and Philip Levine at the Poets' Walk, Citicorp Plaza.

By

Michael

Several

he sculpture garden at the 444 South Flower Building in downtown Los Angeles lies only four blocks away from the Poet s' Walk sculpture/poetry collaboration at Citicorp Plaza. Both are corporately funded. Yet despite their proximity, and common form of sponsorship, they represent two poles in a philosophical evolution. Each in its own way testifies to the dramatic changes in both the content and relevance of public art during the past decade.

accepted design element in urban development, while its content was steadily declining into sterile and trivial issues. Social relevance, public purpose, and harmony with its surroundings were terms that were no longer applied to art in the public space. Instead, installations conformed to the modernist ideology that art must stand alone with no responsibilities to either history, tradition, or political issues. It is that agenda that Chrismas brought to the 444 South Flower Building by selecting five internationally recognized artists whose careers he was then promoting through his gallery.

The first group of five works was installed at the 444 South Flower Building (initially named the Wells Fargo Building) shortly after the completion of the 48-story setback high rise in late 1981. With a $ 1.1 million budget, the public art project was one of the most expensive in Los Angeles during the 1980s. It was also one of the first to include a fee for an outside art consultant â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Douglas Chrismas, former owner of one of the city's most prestigious galleries, consulted via Art in Architecture, an organization he established for the purpose of raising public consciousness to the arts.'

Hung on the back wall of a dark ground-floor alcove, Frank Stella's "Long Beach" is one of the 68 reliefs comprising his Circuit series. Its presence here commemorates the importance of the series in the evolution of Stella's artistic career. Whereas the spatial concerns of "Long Beach" are limited to its own physical boundaries and its historic references are restricted to Stella's earlier works and to Picasso's cubism, 2 the space responds with inadequate lighting that dampens the metallic mural's vibrant colors. Indeed, there is little pleasure in this installation, for neither the relief nor its context serve each other well.

At the time he was hired, public art was increasingly becoming an

Even less satisfying is Robert Rauschenberg's "Fargo Podium." The

T

It's only four blocks from the 1980s to the 1990s in downtown Los Angeles

8 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

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1991

piece, which is a collage of images protected under a laminated tempered glass cover strong enough to sit on, attempts to combine the functions of a bench with high art. Its installation was disappointing to Los Angeles Times art critic William Wilson, who dismissed it as "wan and silly" 3 while David Martin, the building's architect, confessed that the "piece doesn't fit its surroundings real well. 4 The public's reaction was even more critical: they completely ignored it. As an urban amenity, "Fargo Podium," after nearly 10 years has had so little impact that its removal now wouldn't be noticed, its departure wouldn't be missed, and its former presence wouldn't ever be remembered.

Mark di Suvero's "Shoshone," however, is imposing and noticeable.

Painted in two tones of red, it is a variation of the typically large pieces di Suvero fashions from I-beams used in constructing modern high-rise office towers. On one hand, "Shoshone" responds to the vast empty spaces of downtown, playing against the nearby office towers and serving as a magnificent frame for John Portman's block-size megastructure, the Bonaventure Hotel.

But the piece is not just an innocent source of visual pleasure. Its enormous size, accentuated by a tight fit within a small, partially enclosed patio, overwhelms the viewer with a sense of awe. Rather than evoking a formal grandeur or revealing the sacred mysteries of the universe, it makes an aesthetic pact with the surrounding architectural symbols of high finance to celebrate the profane economic forces driving the downtown real estate market.

In contrast to "Shoshone," Bruce Nauman's "Trench, Shafts, Pit, Tunnel, Chambers" accents a similarly scaled space like an elegant centerpiece. It is ironic that the most intimate in scale and the most compatible with its site of the five works was neither designed for its site nor is even unique. Indeed, its installation violates the procedurally correct canons of artist-architect collaboration by resembling the process followed when an interior designer chooses a picture to match a rug. The piece, executed in 1979 in an edition of three, was later exhibited at a Vancouver gallery owned by Chrismas, who then sold it to this development because it coincidentally complements its surroundings.

Artist-architect collaboration, however, was present with Michael Heizer's "North, South, East, West."

Four highly polished stainless-steel figures, representing the basic geometric shapes, fill the building's forecourt. Their orientation, size,and scale were executed with advice from the building's architect — again, David Martin — who recommended linking each figure to the site by placing them atop a travertine marble pad outlining the shape of their base.

Though "North, South, East, West" creates a dramatic formal entrance to a home of corporate power, critic Rainer Crone, without noticing any contradiction, described the work as continuing Kazimir Malevich's idea that "Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion. It no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners. It wants to have nothing further to do with objects and believes that it can exist in and for itself." 5 What was conceived to be a promotion for modern art at 444 S. Flower was transformed into a memorial to public art's recent past by the completion of the first of three parts of the Poets' Walk project at Citicorp Plaza early this year.

Developed by project art consultant Kathy Lucoff, it consists of seven works, each created through a collaboration between an artist and a poet. Rather than being isolated and esoteric statements using art and words, this collection responds to the architecture and social dynamics of Citicorp Plaza, forming an ensemble that speaks directly to the ordinary person.

A visitor is introduced to the collection at Citicorp Plaza by "Once There Was a Forest." Eight poems by Robert Creely and supporting illustrations by James Surls are incised into the granite tops of each of the bollards lining Seventh Street.

This introspective series gives new meaning to "site-specific" by responding to the private spaces and reflective moments that people create for themselves while they sit waiting, resting, or observing the passing urban scene.

As the visitor walks toward the main entrance of the office tower, the content of the Poets'Walk quickly changes in scale from personal and intimate to the larger domain of the business world. "Corporate Head," a life-size bronze statue by Terry Allen, portrays a man in a business suit slightly bent over, holding a briefcase — with his head completely buried in the facade of the office tower. Philip Levine's poem is encased in the pavement, forcing the viewer into the position of the statue in order to read: They said I had a head for business.

They said to get ahead I had to lose my head.

They said be concrete <fc 1 became concrete.

They said, go, my son, multiply, divide, conquer.

I did my best.

Corporate civilization also gives definition and vitality to "Natural

Instincts." A sequence of three brass silhouettes designed by Joe Fay and bolted on piers at the rear of the office building, the sculpture depicts a homeless dog stalking a cat, which is leaping at a bird flying'away. From a distance this composition appears as a bucolic embellishment to an urban setting. But when the poetry of Gary Soto inscribed on each figure is read, this simple reference to the animal kingdom becomes a barbed comment on the juxtaposition of abundant material wealth with spiritual and ethical poverty.

By moving into the restful parklike plaza at the rear of the office building, the visitor will find two small bronze statues sitting on benches; the statues poke fun at the employment and lunchtime habits of the workers. David Gilhooly incorporated Robert Mezey's poems in the newspaper print in "Pigeons Acquire Philosophy" (a pigeon pecking at a broken egg that is oozing off a newspaper) and "The Public Abandons Philosophy" (a piece of pizza and a part of a sandwich on top of a newspaper). With their texture and color, these life-size works are the most sensual in the Poets' Walk. And with their friendly and playful realism, they have become companions to people enjoying their lunch, talking with friends, and basking in the warm California sun.

The Poets' Walk includes two installations that respond in dramatically contrasting fashion to specific architectural features in Citicorp Plaza. The collaborative work "Overall" relates to a bank of outdoor stairs and escalators connecting the plaza with a lower-level shopping mall. What links the passageway with the installation is not size, shape, scale, or materials, however, but movement.

Affixed to a crossbeam is a copper plate inscribed on one side with descriptive prose by Lawrence Weiner: "Under & Over/Over & Under/&Under & Over/& Over & Under." On the other side with a brief verse by Carolyn Kizer — "Time Over/Over Time." Together, their literary equation sums up the repetitive rhythm of people passing underneath.

At the edge of the plaza, standing like an awkward adolescent waiting to be asked for a dance, "Portals to Poetry" mimics the revolving doors at the back of the office tower. Artist George Herms crowned four discarded door frames with a rusted buoy and anchored the entire assemblage to the site with metallic cogs. He also welded to each door replicas of the sidewalk panels marking the entrance to the corporate real estate. But instead of threatening eviction, his plaques are engraved with poems by Charles Simic, the 1990 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, who treats the door as a metaphor for opening and discovering new possibilities.

While other works in the Poet s' Walk either explore the character, define the open spaces, or expose the architectural symbols of Citicorp Plaza," Walk Earth Talk" is a lesson on how public art can remake a public place without altering its appearance.

Granite tiles incised with a single letter or a single word selected by Lucille Clifton were organized by April Greiman into patterns forming paths and places in the plaza floor.

This delicate accent to the pavement subtly transforms the character of the plaza from an emotional void to a living enclave quietly vibrating with the spirit of place.

Although the Poets' Walk is still not complete (phase two will only have a single environmental installation, while phase three will not even be planned until the mid-1990s), already one feels not the inert cloistered air of an art museum but an urban vitality shaped by a mix of diverse voices. The values that public art traditionally has expressed, the sense of social responsibility and civic duty that it attempted to preserve, are alive in these small works. And the public that witnesses these works is not the art-world elite, who derive financial gain by promoting artistic fashion, but the workers who see the art every day.

Michael Several is a free-lance writer specializing in the public art of downtown Los Angeles.

Notes 1. Anonymous, "Art in Architecture," no date (flyer) 2. William Rubin, Frank Stella 19701987, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987, p. 114

Bruce Nauman's "Trench, Shafts, Pit, Tunnel, Chambers," located in the sculpture garden at the 444 South Flower Building. Los Angeles.

3. William Wilson, "Sculpture Gardens to Soothe the Frazzled," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 4, 1983, p. 7 4. Mike Teverbaugh, "Rauschenberg Unveiled at Wells Fargo," Downtown News, July 5, 1983, pp. 1,6 5. Rainer Crone, "Mythopoetic Abstractions," Michael Heizer Sculpture in Reverse, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1984, p. 66, citing Essays on Art 1915-1928

9 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

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1991

SCULPTURE

10 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

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1991

GARDENS he building of sculpture gardens and parks is a phenomenon that took hold in this country in the 1960s and has proliferated dramatically in the 1970s and '80s. With new gardens planned in such diverse locations as Birmingham, Ala. and Washington, D.C., it seems that there will be little letup in the current decade. Nor is the phenomenon restricted to the United States: sculpture gardens have flourished in Europe and Japan for more than 10 years. With the garden-building movement now a quarter of a century old, it is possible to make a few observations and draw a few conclusions.

T

It seems clear now that, in this country at least, the impetus for the development of sculpture gardens came from two primary sources. One was the example of several mid-century modernist masters like Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, and David Smith, who in the 1950s had considerable success in siting their work out of doors. Particularly important with respect to the garden or park theme were Moore with his penchant for pastoral settings, and David Smith's studio at Bolton's Landing, where Smith's welded steel configurations were placed before the backdrop of the Adirondack Mountains for the contemplation of the artist.

The second stimulus was the growing interest in public art — itself spurred on by the successes of Calder, Smith and Moore—which resulted in the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts' much-touted Art in Public Places program in 1967. This program did not support the garden concept per se, but rather, with the optimism in government typical of the '60s, the notion of public sculpture as a democratic art for the people. Hand-in-hand with this official approval — and a proliferation of urban building regulations that required areas of open space at the ground level of new high-rise buildings — came a corporate vogue for public sculpture intended to "humanize" both the corporation's image and the steel-andglass architectural megaliths that dominated urban construction of the period.

taken on the role of refuges for individual vision and formal experimentation — in short, providing havens for late Modernist sculpture. In semi-private oases like the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, artists are given far more latitude than they will ever find in the realm of official public art.

What these parks are not, however, is truly "public" in the sense of being integrated into everyday life. They are places people go specifically for relaxation, enjoyment, and a little stimulation on the side. As such, they may remind one of earlier public parks, like Central Park in New York or Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. But the 19th- century parks were viewed as a place to escape from the congestion of the city, enjoy nature, and get in a little relaxation; sculpture was a secondary element, intended to provide moral benefit to what might otherwise be a frivolous expenditure of time. The sculpture garden, almost by definition, foregrounds art as the main attraction.

The variety of work in today's sculpture gardens betrays an origin, in this century, in the museum garden, such as MoMA's in New York, or the KrollerMiiller in the Netherlands. Like a conventional museum, these gardens display an array of work by different artists arranged in a manner that encourages comparison and contrast and that seeks to tell the viewer something about the evolution of contemporary sculpture. Thus unlike the great gardens of the past — Tivoli, Versailles, Stourhead — they do not, as Kimberlee Stryker laments in her article in the current issue, present a homogeneous world view, but often seem fractured and a trifle arbitrary. If gardens present microcosms of an era's view of the relations between man and nature, then the diversity emblematic of contemporary gardens would seem to reflect our devotion to the idea of democracy — we are uncomfortable with any large project that is clearly the product of a single, strong, authoritative presence — as well as a view of nature as a series of only loosely related events, where the master plan seems obscure but which are worthy of admiration in their own right. Significantly, the artist who has had the most success in maintaining complete control of garden design has been Isamu Noguchi, whose gardens are rather small in scale and can be seen as oases of intent set amidst the confusion of urban America.

Ultimately, the welded and painted steel abstractions that proliferated in outdoor plazas in the 1960s and '70s proved unsatisfying. Urban sculpture seemed condemned to compete unsuccessfully with the scale of city architecture while simultaneously b y dwarfing and alienating the pedestrian whose experience it P e t e r was meant to enhance. The work earned derisive nicknames B o s w e l l like "plop art" and "turd in the plaza."

The growth in popularity of the sculpture garden in this period, among both artists and art administrators may be said to be the product of the failure of this public art. While the idea of public — or at least outdoor — art, with its connotations of democracy and healthy extroversion, remained popular, its shortcomings in an urban setting were obvious.

Hence the development of rural sculpture parks—of which Storm King, some sixty miles up the Hudson River from New York City, remains the preeminent example — where gargantuan welded steel works, initially intended for urban plazas, were put out to pasture, much to their benefit. These semi-rural sculpture parks are invariably likened to the Romantic English gardens of the 18th and 19th centuries, the architectural follies of the earlier gardens being replaced by the heroic steel assemblages of the later ones. In fact, a more apt analogy may be with theme parks like Africa USA, where exotic species have been relocated and domesticated and protected in a fenced, secure environment.

In the 1970s and '80s, as the initial lessons of public art were learned, a new brand of outdoor sculpture emerged. It was geared not towards autonomous, freestanding objects, but towards the development of a sense of "place," whether physical or symbolic.

Though admirable in its intent to integrate the role of the artist into society and develop concepts that are wedded both conceptually and physically to their locales, the results have often been less than inspiring. The process has given rise to a new class of artists — the professional public artists, virtuosos at maneuvering through the bureaucracies, building-code experts, adept at compromise, and with a keen eye for the conceptual "hook" that will convince screening panels that they are getting something geared toward the unique character of their communities. In time, it has devolved into a kind of art by committee — artists collaborating with architects, landscape architects, city planning committees, and community groups. The results often display a common banality: open, empty plazas featuring decorative, easy to maintain paving, discreet seating elements, a few ornamental fillips like light posts, grill work, or the odd abstract or referential object that provides a superficial reminder of the locale's history, and perhaps a little water.

Among the most intriguing developments in contemporary sculpture gardens, as their history seems to indicate, involves precisely the marriage of an older pre-20th-century vision, with contemporary art. This has happened primarily in Europe, where 18th- and 19th-century villas and gardens have became the site for permanent installations of contemporary sculpture, as at Villa Celle near Pistoia, Italy, or in France where the government, having acquired old estates in lieu of taxes, has transformed them into public sculpture parks, as at the Chateau de Kerguehennac in Brittany, or the charming but apparently failed experiment at Clisson. In these places, contemporary artists engage in a dialogue not only with nature, but also with history, as their work coexists with the carefully plotted landscape conventions of Romantic gardens and the neo-classical sculptures and pavilions that are scattered throughout the gardens.

What is perhaps most surprising about today's sculpture gardens is that earth art, whose marriage of art and nature surely has contributed greatly to the vogue for sculpture gardens, has made so little headway in gardens in this country. England, with its passion for nature and gardening, can boast of innovative programs such as those found at Grizedale Forest and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, but the vast preponderance of works in U.S. sculpture parks and gardens are conventional sculptural objects or site-specific installations made of desirable materials such as steel and stone. No doubt the principal reason for the paucity of works involving landscaping and greenery is not so much a lack of curatorial initiative as the cost of maintaining such works year after year. It would seem that the likeliest prospects for the future commissioning of such works are joint public/private ventures such as the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden or the Stuart Collection at the University of California-San Diego, where public agencies are responsible for the maintenance of the grounds and have the staff, equipment, and expertise to address the needs of such works. Another alternative is presented by the example of such grass-roots organizations as Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City and Snug Harbor Cultural Center, which focuses on temporary installations. In our day and age, the emphasis on permanence may itself be outmoded.

Peter Boswell is associate curator at Walker Art Center, where he assists with oversight and programming for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

In contrast to the bureaucratic cast of current public art, sculpture gardens have

11 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL/WINTER

1991

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imilar rhetoric and rapture often surround a museum's sculpture garden and the Olmstedian, naturalistic urban park. Each is perceived as an oasis offering pastoral respite from the clamorous, unhealthy tumult of the city; each offers an Arcadian type of other-worldness which seemingly makes no demands. Yet the museum garden by definition is enfolded by a temple (or at least the 20th-century parody of one, as Guy Davenport has observed), which is the locus of a potentially very demanding variety of otherworld. Perhaps then the museum garden offers an oasis from both the city and the museum, despite the presence of art amid the shrubs.

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But that may be splitting hairs. How different, after all, is the ubiquitous "white box" (which persists — despite the advent of postmodern design — as the archetypal museum and gallery) from the outdoor room or rooms that constitute its sculpture garden? A look at two quintessentially modern museums — the Museum of Modern Art in New York, opened in 1939, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., opened in 1974 — which for all intents and purposes bookend the most widespread manifestation of architectural modernism in the United States, shows the interior and exterior spaces of this museum architecture to be ideologically quite consistent.

The absence of any theoretical rationale for the sculpture garden in accounts of the original plans for the Museum of Modern Art — the founders of which were so determined to exhibit the play of modernism across the full spectrum of fine and applied arts — seems to indicate that the garden was included as a given, another space for the exhibition of sculpture, and not a vehicle for a specifically modern vision of a sculpture garden, or, indeed, a modern vision of a garden of any sort.

In fact, the space at MoMA is plainly a walled courtyard garden, a type directly tied to the most ancient "roofless" gardens, yet it is in accord with the rest of the museum, since, like the building,

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the garden shuts out the city; a one-story-high stone wall runs along 54th Street, while the three other, window-studded garden walls direct one's gaze inward, into the interior of MoM A. This exclusion excepts the sky, which, after all, is not of the city, but above and beyond it; the sky is like the white walls and ceilings of the hermetic galleries, suggesting timelessness and transcendence, with, presumably, the art present as vehicle for passage into this sphere of spirit.

And who provides these vehicles? Despite modernism's insistence that the center is hollow, the modern museum and its garden have, by setting up such hushed conditions for homage, consistently assured us that there is a class of gods and they are the artists and designers of museum-worthy items.

A visit to the MoMA garden, however, substantiates the original observation that the museum's own garden can be a retreat from the museum's version of the world, since here few visitors fix their gazes on the spread of bronzes and metals. Indeed, last time I was there nearly everyone present was seated in one of the garden chairs either chatting, reading, writing, or doing nothing (though there was one young man videotaping Rodin's "Homage to Balzac"). A sense can be derived that this manifestation of the modern museum garden (redesigned by ideological and architectural chameleon Philip Johnson in 1954) does not take its own authority that seriously, given that there are no benches permanently anchored in front of the sculptures for one-on-one communication, and there is a playfulness attendant in the siting of some of the works. For example, a 1942 piece by Polygnotos Vagis, a snake form in gneiss given by the artist in memory of his wife, is slyly amusing, if somewhat malicious, nestled in the ivy. And two big bronze and lead female nudes that flank a water-spouting reflecting pool — one by Maillol which is tilted at a flightlike angle, the other by Lachaise — suggest a splash party rather than ascension via art.

On the other hand, in the dreary Hirshhorn sculpture garden, the modern museum narrative enjoining us to recognize the gods and the godfathers ("major" collectors) among us is as set in concrete as the contract between Joe Hirshhorn and the U.S. government which guarantees his name shall stay with the museum in perpetuity. Here, the traffic pattern which moves the visitor through the tunnel under Jefferson Avenue to the museum is as tightly controlled as it is in the interior spaces housed by the infamous concrete "doughnut."

The walled garden, sunk into the Mall, includes three rooms connected by a couple of "corridors."

While, unlike the MoMA garden, admittance to this garden is free and the space has been carved into the symbolic national commons of the immense Capitol Mall, there is something fundamentally private, not public, about the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden. Perhaps this is simply due to its outdoor-gallery quality — it's not a place where a group of people could congregate. Moreover, because of the rigid flow pattern, time is expressly linear, and thus the visitor moves in the direction of the eternal; the works are authorized as timeless, and the "rightness," the selectivity of the visitor's sensibility is confirmed.

The privacy and interiority is further emphasized by the small scale of the spaces and the artworks, a quality shared with MoMA. Basically the suggestion of the private and the enclosed is so strong at the Hirshhorn garden that one feels like the roof has simply blown off of a wing of the museum. Hence the design effectively annuls the potentially expansive experience of sky/nature that Le Corbusier intended with his severe early modern outdoor-room gardens, which, as noted, succeeds somewhat in its use at MoMA. In any case, one might argue that the outdoor room

"fundamental relationship between nature and the city."

Lodged between entrance and exit ramps to the city, on an escarpment that commands a sweeping vista of some of Montreal's 19th-century industrial and working-class neighborhoods and leading towards the St. Lawrence River, the garden is both a prominent landmark and a place to be and look out from. The scale is large, the gigantic being, as Susan Stewart noted in On Longing: Narrative of the Miniature, Gigantic and the Souvenir, at the origin of both public and natural history and at the overlap of the natural and the human.

In this garden the issue of distraction does not come up, as the surrounding environs do not compete with the aggregate of elements constituting it, but work with them to illuminate layers of the city. These elements — a ruin-like reflection of the Shaughnessay House (an 1874 mansion restored and incorporated into the CCA which lies across a busy boulevard from the garden); eleven columns supporting architectural constructions that reference (perhaps too directly) various Montreal building types; and a small apple orchard and indigenous tree-lined "boulevards"—are not meant to be isolated and categorized as plantings, sculpture, or architecture; all is of a piece that is, in turn, a piece of the city, an ever-sum of decay, regeneration, creation.

endures as the museum garden design of choice (it was, for example, the metaphor employed by the designers of the Walker Art Center's Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, which opened in 1988) because it best accommodates urban geographic constraints and because it provides effective protection against distractions which threaten the experience of the artworks.

Yet the conception of the museum as protector, as sanctuary for dominant narratives — including the idea of the immiscibility of nature and the city, an idea that has fed anti-urban tendencies, which in turn have contributed to the creation of a various oases from the city — has been under siege for quite some time. Thus

Despite modernism's insistence that the center is hollow, the modern museum and its garden have consistently assured us that there is a class of gods and they are the artists and designers of museumworthy items. far the response to increasing pressure that the museum become of the public rather than for it, has, like a dose of medicine, resulted largely in changes within the traditional format, i.e., curatorial changes. But it is likely that the form of the museum will gradually change as the institution of the museum undergoes fundamental changes.

As forthe urban museum's sculpture garden, maybe one day it will be entirely done away with, as possibly the city itself becomes more of a garden, or even as the museum dissolves altogether. At present, however, one museum sculpture garden that has strikingly eschewed the security of the outdoor room (and the pastoral park) model in favor of a form that is of the city is the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.

While the Centre itself may have the appearance of an (exquisite) armory, the garden, designed by artistarchitect Melvin Charney, does reflect founding director Phyllis Lanbert's design imperative that it "relate to the ecological built history of the site and city and comment on urban landscape" as well as express a

However, what would constitute a distraction would be to suggest that an "oasis of urbanity," as the CCA garden has been called, may be appropriate for a museum without a specifically architectural or urban focus. For what is at issue is the experience of being in a place, in a world; and if it is a world from which we are in the habit of seeking asylum, perhaps examination and transformation of both that habit and that world are in order. If the overall form and artworks (temporary or permanent) of a museum sculpture garden can communicate this examination and transformation as being what is truly open to the public, then it is an outdoor "room with a view" which may well see the museum into the 21st century.

Jane Dodds is a writer living in New York.

13 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

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1991

STORM

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working environment for the artist, who made good use of its natural setting. Finished pieces as well as works in progress were placed on the grounds for display or the artist's further reflection. The relationship of art and landscape that stimulated Smith's late work is the dynamic that directs Storm King' s philosophy and activities.

For more than 30 years, H. Peter Stern, chairman of Star Expansion Industries, has served as president of Storm King's board of trustees. He modestly described his role as an "element of continuity." He has carried on and enlarged Ogden's first expectations in partnership with David R. Collens, who has served as the center's director since 1978. While Storm King remains dedicated to the exhibition of permanent pieces in its magnificent Hudson River Valley landscape, it also organizes an annual exhibition. Two years ago it presented a retrospective of Anne and Patrick Poirier's work; last year's exhibition of drawings and sculptures included the reconstruction of Alice Aycock's 1973 piece, "Low Building with Dirt Roof (for Mary)" on the south lawn next to the museum building. This past summer a group show entitled Enclosures and Encounters presented the work of contemporary artists Dennis Adams, Siah Armajani, Alice Aycock, Donna Dennis, Lauren Ewing, and Dan Graham, whose work explores the architectural dimensions of sculptural spaces. Next year Ursula von Rydingsvard's monumental wood constructions will be exhibited. These annual events provide a particular view of contemporary sculpture and serve as a counterpoint to the center's permanent collection.

T

o describe a site located less than 60 miles from Manhattan as isolated stretches a point, but it also makes one. Located on the grounds of a former private residence, Storm King Art Center, the sculpture park in Mountainville, N.Y., is spectacularly tucked away in the southern hills of the Catskills. It may be a short hop from New York City, but its affinity is with the regional environment.

A lot of people first discover the center while driving north at 60 miles per hour on the New York Throughway. Just beyond Star Expansion Industries (whose relationship to Storm King is significant) there are glimpses of spacious clearings and rolling hills covered by a verdant swath of trimmed grass. There are also momentary sightings of monumental sculptures placed in this meticulously managed pastoral landscape — a piece by Mark di Suvero entitled "Mother Peace" (1970) or Alice Aycock 's more recent "Three-Fold Manifestation II" (1987), a spiraling steel construction which was originally installed by the Public Art Fund in a very urban site, Doris Freedman Plaza at the southern end of Central Park. But these fleeting views through a car window don't convey the scale and scope of Storm King, the magnificence of this middle landscape, the many pieces of sculpture in its narrowly focused, post-1945 collection.

Storm King is a major public sculpture garden that began as a very individual vision. It has never been affiliated with a museum; its institutional vision evolved independently in the past 10 years. Storm King's staff and board have enhanced the center's visibility. If not exactly a household word, the number of visitors to the center each year has increased dramatically. But it still stands alone and protected, symbolic of its genesis and particular presentation of modern sculpture.

Ralph Ogden, who made a fortune with his Star Expansion Co. selling fasteners for the construction industry, began collecting art in

David Smith's bronze, "Personage of May," 1957. the 1950s. Most of his early purchases were idiosyncratic, pieces he liked, often by little-known artists he admired, selected without benefit of an "artistic advisor." By the late '50s, his ideas had become ambitious enough to consider the public exhibition of the collection. Through the foundation established in his name, he bought a 200-acre private estate for the new Storm King Art Center, which by the mid-1980s had doubled in size and acquired a 2,300-acre conservancy west of the center, through contributions by Star.

Ogden's vision for what the center could become was influenced by two trips he made. In 1961, while traveling in Austria, he visited a quarry where sculpture was created on site through the sponsorship of the Austrian government. The production and presentation of sculpture in a natural environment appealed to him. Six years later he went to northern New York to visit the home and studio of the late artist David Smith.

Here, Ogden not only bought 13 Smith sculptures for the Storm King permanent collection, but also acquired a clearer idea of how Storm King might function as an open-air sculpture museum. Smith's studio in

Storm King's grounds appear boundless — there are few other landscapes that could equal the drama, expansiveness, and exceptional variety of spaces and vistas for the siting of sculpture. It is still easy to appreciate the environmental qualities that drew Hudson River School painters and, years later, Winslow Homer to the area. But the Storm King collection is deliberately narrow, its representation of modern sculpture purposefully limited; the center makes no claim to be comprehen-

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sive. Its focus is the presentation of mid-to-late 20thcentury sculpture of steel, bronze, or stone. Much of the work is monumental (and durable), examples of the emergence of welded-steel, large-scale, abstract sculpture. The work is shown by Storm King for both aesthetic and pragmatic reasons; these pieces reflect an almost heroic idea of artistic practice and they can withstand the elements — with dedicated and constant maintenance by the staff.

Storm King embraces world views from two centuries, and it appears visitors keenly feel the duality.

On the one hand, the sculpture collection represents a particular genre of 20th-century sculpture that exploits new materials and technologies at a size that often exceeds the architecture of the conventional exhibition space. The scale of much of the work thrives in conditions of isolation and visions of limitless space.

On the other hand, the Storm King landscape, skillfully reconfigured and adjusted during the past three decades by landscape architect William Rutherford, suggests a 19th-century vision of the world. It is a picturesque landscape: A melding of Edmund Burke's dialectic, the topography and vegetation are a patient negotiation of the harsh unpredictability of the sublime and the charming serenity of the beautiful in nature. The Storm King site is the apotheosis of the 19th-century middle landscape where art that sits so dramatically in this rural setting speaks of the current century of discordant ideas and congestion—a world where nature is often imperiled, not enhanced, by human intervention.

Many have praised the easy, agreeable relationship of Storm King's 19th-century landscape and its collection of monumental 20th-century art. But it is the disequilibriums, disharmonies, the intellectual complexities and aesthetic differences that make this sculpture garden an exceptional art environment. Long before the development of an art center for the public, the Storm King site first was the vision of a rich gentleman who acquired the land and built himself a small chateau to create a very private and privileged retreat. There remains a quality of privilege at Storm King, but the idea of retreat has become more ecumenical, more public.

When I first visited the spacious grounds there were concurrent, even contradictory, feelings of refreshment, reverence, enjoyment, and a little unease. I imagined the great rural cemeteries of the 19th century

like Mt. Auburn or Greenwood, which served a number of aesthetic, social, and practical purposes. In the early 1800s it had become clear that enormous, centralized cemeteries in the midst of growing, populated cities were neither practical nor hygienic, so new ones were planned beyond urban centers.

These peripheral, exurban sites were natural and charming — so charming that the new burial grounds also became pleasure grounds. City dwellers visited them to picnic, stroll, and soak up their quiet rural qualities; they were the progenitors of public parks and gardens. These middle landscapes were for the living and the dead, for art and nature, for entertainment and enlightenment. There is a lineage between these marvelous cemeteries and the contemporary sculpture garden where people go to recreate, contemplate, or pay their respects to the gathering of art.

Storm King confirms that the great outdoors is a fine showcase for art, and maybe a less threatening, more inviting situation for people to encounter it.

Whether or not the collected sculpture was ever intended for this kind of landscape. Storm King provides a privileged but public retreat to consider art and nature. One can wander the grounds for a day enjoying the scenery and the carefully sited art and consider if culture and nature have formed a new, if more problematic, union.

As a sculpture park for the 20th century, Storm King provides a small but sure vision of sculpture.

The institution's long-standing commitment to established reputations and permanent work will never allow a cutting edge to emerge, but the center tries to look ahead, if cautiously. The annual shows are a lively syncopation to the carefully arranged rhythms of the natural site and permanent installations.

Alice Aycock's retrospective was emblematic of Storm King's attempts to view the present while being a guardian of the recent past. Aycock's energetic, eclectic, and narrative sculpture didn't neatly coincide with ideas reflected in the permanent collection, but the power, energy, and vitality of the work held its own and Storm King was a gracious host."Three-Fold Manifestation II" is a huge, steel construction situated at the base of a steep hill far to the south of the museum building. It is solitary but not inert; like the tumbling rotation of orbiting theaters it implies, the dynamism is discernible even from a distance. But its scale and material make it a compatible relative in the Storm King family.

"Three-Fold Manifestation II," a 32-foot-high painted steel piece by Alice Aycock, 1987.

Aycock's earlier work, "Low Building with Dirt Roof (for Mary)" is more the foster child. Made of stone, wood, and earth, it is intensely psychological and demandingly intimate. This is not sculpture as scenography, situated in an ample setting to be viewed and enjoyed from afar; it must be physically encountered. Though not part of the Storm King collection, the piece remains on site for this season. By July, its packed, soil roof had seeded a field of long grasses and wildfiowers, a fresh, enchanting mane that belies its brooding, ambiguous space. It looks pleasingly out of place in the family of Sugarman, di Suvero, Calder, Tucker, and Grosvenor. It suggests an uneasy but far more intriguing partnership of nature and art that exists at Storm King, as well as the center's attempts to understand new sculptural generations — and those yet to arrive.

Patricia Phillips is an art and architecture critic and chair of the arts studio at the State University of New York-New Paltz.

15 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL/WINTER

1991

1 GARDEN B y

M a s o n

R i d d l e

When you work in a garden you must take on the rain, the sun, the sky, and the landscape. To work in a garden is a huge undertaking. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ursula von Rydingsvard

HIGHSTEIN

arden sites present a unique challenge to visual artists. Neither animal nor mineral, , a garden is a distinct breed of outdoor site that both shares and sidesteps characteris' tics inherent in other public art venues such as streets, parks, and corporate plazas. Moreover, the definition of what constitutes a garden also varies. Both the sprawling grounds at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, N. Y., and the expansive corporate campus at the General Mills headquarters in Golden Valley, Minn., with their organic, relatively unstructured plans, are frequently thought of as gardens. Representing the other extreme are the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, adjacent to Walker Art Center, and the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The latter two are tightly organized spaces whose rigid designs and surrounding structures clearly affect the art within their confines.

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Like other contexts for public art, a garden is usually outside, yet it potentially raises a more complex set of issues. To create work for a garden, visual artists must consider not only the garden's design and degree of artificiality but also the materials and scale of nearby buildings, as well as pedestrian traffic, which may be more leisurely than in streets and downtown plazas. The severity of the climate and its impact on materials from which the work is made is also a critical issue, as is surrounding vegetation and its seasonal change, the sky, the ground plane, entry and departure points, allees, and the placement of other artworks. And, as is true for the commissioning process for most art created for public places, the artist must work with an opinionated army of curators, engineers, and city planners, in addition to the landscape architect's preconceived design â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a situation which makes an already involved process even more complex.

ERIK LEVINE

To lend insight into the nature of gardens and the process of making art for them, telephone interviews were conducted in September 1991 with artists Jene Highstein, Erik Levine, and Ursula von Rydingsvard, all of whom live and work in New York City or its environs. While their art and experience in making art for outdoor sites varies, they share the distinction of each having been commissioned by Walker Art Center to make a piece for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Of the trio, Jene Highstein is the veteran in making large-scale work for outdoor sites. He has created pieces for the Laumeier sculpture park in St. Louis, for an urban garden in Lincoln, Neb., for the open General Mills campus, and for a private, heavily wooded site in Lake Forest, 111. He recently completed a sunken courtyard at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and has plans to make work for sites in Sweden, Portugal, and Austria. Highstein, who has worked in marble, stone, concrete, and wood, believes one of his most successful pieces is one commissioned for the lush

URSULA VON RYDINGSVARD

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1991

indoor Botanical Garden in Santa Barbara, Calif., and later installed at a severe, arid outdoor site in Corpus Christi, Texas. "I like the ability to move through various landscapes and to work with a different people.

The point of a commissioning process is to respond to different environments," says Highstein.

Highstein's untitled piece for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden comprises three massive rounded forms made of granite that loosely enclose a space.

Suggestive of an ancient Druid site, the work was first commissioned for one of the garden's four room-like quadrants which are surrounded by fir trees and low, rose-colored granite walls.

For Highstein, the critical issue in the Walker commission was his lack of information about the other two works already installed in the quadrant.

Describing the garden as a "peculiar planned environment that is uninteresting in its basic layout," the artist chose to make the three forms "look inward, to relate to themselves." Highstein readily acknowledges that his piece was theoretically an "incorrect response" to the site. His connection to the space, besides the scale of the piece, was his choice of granite, although in a different shade than the rose-colored walls. Since it was first temporarily installed in 1988, the work has been purchased by Walker and reinstalled in a more sympathetic garden site by former Walker director Martin Friedman.

According to Highstein, a set of gi vens exists for all outdoor commissioned work, including the type of landscape, climate, and architecture which collectively influence the scale and materials of the piece.

"There must be a match between the object and the environment so that neither dominates. A counterpoint must be achieved so that one enhances the other," explains Highstein.

Highstein likens the commissioning process, particularly for a predesigned environment like the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, as "a kind of dance in which all participants determine if the commission is possible. The terms of the commission must be worked out far ahead of time to see if everyone can operate. All parties represent themselves as vaguely and as broadly as possible and it is those doing the commissioning who make the decision. In reality, some people only want pre-existing ideas, not new work. My project for General Mills was very successful because Don [ McNeil, art program administrator at the corporation] was supportive of my intentions and gave me latitude."

In spite of certain limitations, Highstein does not believe the artist is compromised by the commissioning process. "I don't relish being in an empty room.

For me, the studio is more restricted. Since the majority of my recent work has been made exclusively for specific sites, I am used to working in factories and in nature. A commission is a positive challenge as long as I don't have to compete with other artists." Highstein hopes to some day "work with a great landscape architect and design a really great garden from the beginning. Landscape architects are so knowledge-

"I had to discard previous assumptions and learn new modes of thinking. I was forced to think of my work in terms of site and scale, and how it worked with the two other pieces in the quadrant." â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Erik Levine

"I like the ability to move through various landscapes and to work with different people.

The point of a commissioning process is to respond to different environments."

— Jene Highstein able. Collaborating on a garden is one of the nicest things an artist could do."

In contrast to Highstein's track record, Erik Levine made his first outdoor commissioned work for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The approximately 25-foot-tall "Round House" made from stucco, steel, and plywood suggests the shell of a house balanced in a wheel-like form. A set of contradictions, "Round House" is massive, yet one can see through the architectural form as if looking through the hole a doughnut. Although it appears to be on the verge of toppling, it is immobile because of its weight. While it conjures up notions of a house, it is no more than the most minimal of shelters.

For Levine, the collaborative nature of the commissioning process is both frustrating and liberating, draining and exhilarating. Like Highstein, he found the design of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden less than inspiring. (Ironically, "Round House" was installed on the former site of Highstein's piece.) The project forced Levine to approach scale and materials differently, yet the many reworkings of drawings and the eight-month period of testing materials became tiresome. Working with a muUifaceted crew of 10, including architects, engineers, and numerous employees from the stucco company — in addition to Martin Friedman and Walker curator Peter Boswell — was challenging. "This is a people world," Levine says, "and nothing is higher than people. When those in charge decide how they want a project done, then that is how it is done." If he could have changed any part of the process, it would have been to insist that he work with his own engineer, a point Boswell now agrees with.

In spite of the challenges, Levine believes that the commission was a tremendous opportunity. "Hey, [Walker] took a chance with me. I'm much younger than Ursula and Jene and have no track record for outdoor commissioned work. This was a great opportunity to make work for a politically charged museum." Surprisingly, on completion of the project, he did not feel that either he or the work was compromised. "I had to discard previous assumptions and learn new modes of working. I was forced to think of my work in terms of site and scale, and how it worked with the two other pieces in the quadrant. I wish I could have had the space to myself — 'Round House' is such a rational piece when compared to Brower Hatcher's work."

Levine believes that inherently there is more freedom when working at will in his studio, yet realizes the advantages in creating a commissioned work. "To have one of the best art institutions in the country subsidizing you to make a work and put it on view in a charged environment is a great opportunity. It gave me confidence that I could work in that scale and I can see that the project is influencing my work in an architectural way."

Ursula von Rydingsvard has been making outdoor commissioned pieces since 1979. She has created pieces for the now obliterated Battery Park City landfill in lower Manhattan, Artpark in Lewiston, N.Y., Laumeier, and One Penn Plaza in Philadelphia, among

others. An ensemble of four new pieces will be completed for Storm King by spring 1992. Her monumental "Three Bowls," commissioned by Walker in 1990, is her most massive piece to date. Constructed from cedar and darkened with graphite, the sculpture is a lineup of three huge bowl-like structures joined at the lip. The scale of the piece, with its jagged surfaces, evokes an enigmatic, slightly foreboding atmosphere.

Von Rydingsvard is more impassioned and expressive in her discussion of commissioned art than either Levine or Highstein. For her, an outdoor piece must be able to move not only physically, but also psychologically. "Not only must a work be more durable if it is to be outside, but more important, it must have the capacity to communicate powerfully with the trees and other natural elements," she says. "My desire is to communicate this idea, this piece to someone else — to talk with someone in non-verbal materials. In the last decade, much public work has been disappointing, don't you think? Developers and architects seem to dictate too much. It is more about design and architecture and has lost much of its ability to move emotionally. The corporate look has come to the surface."

Jene Highstein's "Neither Whales/Nor Turtles," a 1990 commission for Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.

For von Rydingsvard, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden posed a particular challenge because of the "strange way of that site." Commissioned for one corner area of the southeast quadrant, "Three Bowls" can be seen from the Walker's restaurant and sculpture terraces as well as from Siah Armajani's bridge, which connects the garden to another city park. "I had to be concerned not only with where the piece could be seen from, but also with the elements of the quadrant. It's like a room. I had to think of the walls, the doors, and how the rows of repeating trees greet one another, which all have their presence. It is really a baroque, heavy-handed space. I also had to deal with the rose color of the granite walls, the sun, and how it would affect the work."

Von Rydingsvard believes that working outdoors on a commissioned project is much less boring and predictable than working in the studio. "It's not that the end result is better, it's just that the process is more fun," she explains. "The need for a larger scale forces you to find a way to achieve a greater presence. This has nothing to do with aggressiveness or being overpowering. It is the ability to command a space . . . I have no interest in being just big and strong."

According to the artist, there are several advantages to commissioned work. One is that the artist knows the work will have a home: "It's hard to define exactly what a sculpture will be when you don't know where it will go." Another advantage is that the process is a springboard, a learning experience in addressing technical issues. "Working outdoors has a way of opening up options never considered in the studio," she explains. "And there is technical expertise of others to help you explore those options."

Von Rydingsvard is currently working on a private commission for a secluded outdoor space in northern California, which may be the ideal site. The client did not stipulate a budget, nor require a proposal years in advance. Rather, he has encouraged von Rydingsvard and other artists to select their sites and begin to work.

If ideas change, they change. "If an idea isn't coming along as we thought, there is the challenge to let it evolve. This way of working is much more powerful than having committed to a drawing and knowing you must stick to it. Here, the main thing is the process, the ability to change and go after new choices. I must be objective to the reality of the project as it develops.

And the reality is much more powerful than a model or drawing."

Erik Levine's "Round House," Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Von Rydingsvard's "Three Bowls" Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Mason Riddle is a Minneapolis-based critic who writes on the visual and performance arts. She is also visual arts curator at Intermedia Arts Minnesota.

17 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

FALL/WINTER

1991

THE

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY — BELLINGHAM, WASH. • U N I V E R S I T Y OF C A L I F O R N I A - S A N D I E G O — LA J O L L A , CALIF.

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he somewhat rarefied context typical of a college or university campus would seem to be an ideal site for the location of outdoor works of art. Expanses of landscape or natural open space, intimate- to largescale buildings, and pedestrian access within this setting are combined with the shared sense of intellectual and didactic purpose by its public (students, faculty, and staff) — who are exploring new territories of investigation and research, and the traditions of a liberal arts education — to form the background in which works of art can be seen, studied, debated, and appreciated.

However, relatively few university campuses in the United States have developed an outdoor collection of art. Of the larger university art museums that have acquired extensive art collections, some include sculpture placed in open spaces (for example, the Franklin Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA). But these are generally extensions of the museum's institutional function of exhibiting art. The notion of utilizing the entire campus for displaying a systematically acquired collection of outdoor art is a more recent phenomenon that is gaining greater acceptance in fulfilling the university's role as a place for both culture and education.

On the West Coast, several campus-wide sculpture and art collections have been established, with another program in the midst of implementation. The collections of sculpture and siteworks at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., and the University of California-San Diego at La Jolla are already well-known and widely praised for the quality and scope of their artwork. At the University of Washington in Seattle, a diverse regional collection which includes several indoor and site pieces has been amassed by the UW Medical Center and will soon be joined by a campus-wide program of artwork generated through the implementation of a "percent-forart" program. The formation of these collections differs at each campus, and each reflects various philosophical approaches and attitudes regarding acquisitions, parameters of style or site-specificity, and degree of interaction with the institutional fabric of each campus.

The trustees of Western Washington University (WWU) determined in 1957 that all construction budgets on campus provide an allocation for artworks. The program was implemented in 1960, seven years before the National Endowment for the Arts established its "Art in Public Places" policy and well before the start of such municipal programs in Seattle and elsewhere. Even so, the collection began rather modestly with a few smaller sculptures in a modernist abstract idiom by local northwest artists; the pieces

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served as a visual punctation mark next to the newly constructed buildings. The architectural plaza was the next site for larger sculptures at WWU, dominated by the architectonic late-modernist works of Isamu Noguchi and Mark di Suvero.

However, the main feature of the WWU campus is not its architectural character (though it has some fine new buildings), but its setting, nestled into a densely

Bruce Nauman's "Vices and Virtues" — Stuart Collection, University of California, San Diego.

(Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann)

The notion of utilizing the entire campus for displaying a systematically acquired collection of outdoor art is a recent phenomenon that is gaining greater acceptance in fulfilling the university's role as a place for both culture and education. wooded hillside with a spectacular view of nearby Bellingham harbor. With the advent of earthworks, siteworks, conceptualism, and other forms of sculptural and spatial exploration in the 1970s, artwork began to distance itself from the institutions of art and to seek other venues. The university campus became one such venue which also yielded a new mechanism of support for the artist — residency on campus, and the underwriting of temporary and permanent siteworks and installation art. Thus contemporary outdoor works of the 1970s were more likely to be found away from buildings rather than within or under their scope of

visual, spatial, or functional dominance.

Robert Morris' "Steam Piece" (1971) and Lloyd Hamrol' s "Log Ramps" (1974) were each the products of the artists' short-term residencies, and responded to the particulars of the site itself by incorporating natural processes, materials, and metaphors. These works also signaled a shift away from the relationship between architect and administration clients towards a greater input from and collaboration with the campus sculpture department.

The collection at WWU accelerated in the late 1970s with the additional support of Virginia Bloedel Wright, a prominent Seattle collector with family ties to Bellingham. The Virginia Wright Fund was a fixed amount set aside for the purchase of sculpture. Though now exhausted, the funds paid for the di Suvero and bought works by Anthony Caro, Donald Judd, Richard Serra, and Robert Maki for the campus. The works chosen reflected her interest in late modernist and Minimalist sculpture. The formal autonomy of these large object-sculptures is made even more emphatic by the strategic placement of each in highly prominent sites around campus.

Partial support from the Virginia Wright Fund combined with state-mandated percent-for-art spending and National Endowment for the Arts purchase awards resulted in the commissioning of new works during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A totemic steel sculpture by Beverly Pepper, Nancy Holt's "Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings," and more recently the siteworks of Alice Aycock, Michal McCafferty, and George Trakas, which were added to the collection in 1987, received state and NEA funding support. Interestingly, with the exception of Pepper's work, these sitework artists sought out the more tranquil and less architecturally concentrated areas on campus, responding more sensitively to the terrain and to nature.

The Outdoor Sculpture Collection at Western Washington University is a reflection of the changing conditions of patronage which it helped, in part, to engender. That explains a few of its anomalies, such as the sculpture made for a building by that building's architect. Though the collection has no agenda or aesthetic ideology to advance, and perhaps despite the varied intentions and requirements of its constituent patrons, it is consistent in the manner and scope of its assembled works — namely, monumental permanent outdoor sculptures and structures.

The Stuart Collection at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) benefits from having a clearly defined philosophy from the outset. An agreement between UCSD trustees and San Diego businessman and philanthropist James Stuart deSilva in 1981 allows deSilva's family-owned Stuart Foundation to purchase works for placement on the UCSD campus.

Stuart Collection director Mary Beebe works directly with the university chancellor's office; otherwise, no

direct links are established between the management of the collection and the institution that best hosts it. The collection, therefore, is quasi-private. Yet compared with the WWU collection, the works commissioned for UCSD bear a much stronger and direct reflection of the school's academic functions and are more integrated into the school's fabric.

The growth of the Stuart Collection does not depend on construction budgets. A high-powered advisory committee including deSilva and prominent art-world figures such as James Demetrion, Anne d'Harnoncourt, Count Panza di Biumo, and Robert Irwin, select the projects from proposals solicited by Beebe. Currently, about eight commissioned projects have been completed and four are being installed.

The first work commissioned, Niki de Saint-Phalle's gigantic and kitschy "Sun God" (1983) is the only work that is not conceptually or physically related to its site.

Interestingly, a number of the artists in the collection have little or no prior experience working in a public or sitespecific contexts. The growth of the collection was at first oriented toward environmental siteworks. Those by Robert Irwin and Richard Fleischner are integrated into the well-groomed landscape of this relatively new institution (founded in 1972). Other landscape- or nature-integrated works in the collection tend to refer to that landscape in a more conceptual or ironic fashion, rather than simply exist within it. These include Terry Allen's three "Trees" (1986), lead-sheathed eucalyptuses with hidden recorded sound; William Wegman' s "La Jolla Vista View" (1988) with telescope and panoramic map; and the discarded televisions embedded in the lawns as part of Nam June Paik's "Something Pacific" (1986), the other component an interactive set of monitors inside of the school's media center.

The use of language characterizes or is an element of several new works in the collection, forming not only a dialectic within itself but also referring to the dialectical pursuit of knowledge. Bruce Nauman's "Vices & Virtues," superimposed neon word-pairings of the seven classic states of humility and hubris, is a latter-day frieze circumrotating the top of a science building, the temple of our time. Ian Hamilton Finlay's "UNDA" is elegant ontological poetry engraved in stone slabs resting like ancient ruins on a pristine grassy expanse.

The Stuart Collection is bracketed by the contemporary sculptural and conceptual art of the 1980s. Though narrower stylistically and philosophically, the WWU collection embraces a longer stretch of modernist sculptural practice. The nascent public art collection at the University of Washington will be built upon the works already owned by the UW Medical Center, including sound treatment of a pedestrian tunnel by Richard Posner, and Mary Miss' recently completed terrace, reticulated pool, fenced path, and gazebo nestled behind the mammoth hospital.

The orientation of the program seems aimed toward types of social-system integration of the kind that is beginning to dominate the leading edge of public art today. San Francisco artist Valerie Soe is conducting interviews among the large Asian student population for her project; Jock Reynolds and Suzanne Helmuth are preparing a project to integrate art experiences or encounters along the bus stops on campus. The process is more like that of a public art agency, with appointed campus advisors and facilitators but with a rotating roster of jurors to select the works. It has the potential of being the most cumbersome approach; it is to be hoped that it will not result in a collection that is put together by committee.

The percent-for-art approach will most likely be the trend of the future for the establishment or expansion of campus sculpture collections â&#x20AC;&#x201D; unless, of course, an exceptional patron can be found to subsidize a program of commissioning and acquisition of outdoor art, like James deSil va and Virginia Wright. Now that many collectors of contemporary art are inclined to set up an independent endowment or foundation in their name, and are geared toward the commissioning as well as purchasing of art, the campus environment is an ideal place for such interactions to occur. After all, everyone else wants to give to the football program.

Ron Glowen is an independent critic and curator based in Seattle, where he also teaches art history at the Cornish College of the Arts.

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"Sun God," a 1983 fiberglass and cement sculpture by Niki de Saint-Phalle at UCSD. (Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann) Ian Hamilton Finlay, "UNDA," 1987, UCSD. (Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann)

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden at night.

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could have been spent on work by their favorite artists.

Others suggest that a garden that borrows its geometric t's never hard to find citizens willing to criticize layout from the formal gardens of 17th-century Eucontemporary art in public places. Their responses rope is an inappropriate venue for art produced in a can range from court action — like the recent 20th-century democracy. controversy surrounding Richard Serra's "Tilted The national press has generally given the Garden Arc" in lower Manhattan — to simple acts of more positive notices. Its mix of mid 20th-century vandalism. Installations that require tax financing or sculpture — Moore, di Suvero, Oldenburg — and collaboration of public and private entities are par- contemporary work by Robert Lobe, Martin Puryear, ticularly vulnerable to public outrage and government Jackie Ferrara, and others has drawn praise from action. In many cases they remain on the drawing board — not for lack of aesthetic merit, but because artists and museum professionals often lack the political savvy, financial muscle, and public relations skills to bring large-scale public/private collaborations to completion.

I

Two Midwestern efforts — in Des Moines, Iowa, and Minneapolis — illustrate the pitfalls and possibilities that attend the birth of ambitious public art projects.

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden has been a success by most measures. Built on vacant parkland adjacent to the Walker Art Center and Guthrie Theatre, the sevenacre facility opened in 1988 with a mix- Walker Art Center's roof with a view. ture of 38 sculptures, both permanent and temporary publications as varied as The New York Times and HG. installations. In its first year, this collaborative effort A functional footbridge designed by Siah Armajani of the Walker and the Minneapolis Park and Recre- has been singled out for greatest praise. It crosses 14 ation Board drew approximately 500,000 visitors. lanes of traffic, connecting the formal geometry of the Attendance at the Walker jumped 40 percent. Since garden — designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, arthen, the garden has become a regional tourist at- chitect of the 1971 Walker Art Center building — to traction, drawing crowds of 5,000 on summer week- the Olmstedian pastorale of nearby Loring Park. ends. Park Board surveys indicate wide acceptance of It's harder to discuss the Des Moines effort, since the garden in the city of Minneapolis, with use by a it remains little more than a project on paper. Plans diversity of ethnic communities and economic classes. approved after four years of lawsuits, public hearings, And a 2.5-acre addition to the garden is already under historical surveys, neighborhood resistance, and neway, scheduled for completion in spring 1992. gotiations would locate site-specific environmental The garden has not avoided all criticism, but the sculptures by Richard Fleischner, Mary Miss, Siah talk has rarely risen above a disgruntled background Armajani, and Robert Irwin in a city park south of the rumble from the Twin Cities art community. Some Des Moines Art Center. Currently only two outdoor have questioned the garden's cost: $12.8 million that pieces have been installed — Richard Serra's "Stand-

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ing Stones" and Bruce Nauman's "Animal Pyramid" — both located on museum-controlled land north of the building.

Despite a $350,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, this collaboration between the City of Des Moines and the Art Center appears stalled for lack of cash. As of August 1991, the Art Center was reevaluating its fund-raising efforts while awaiting the arrival of a new director in the fall.

"The approval process has been a learning experience for the Art Center staff, for the city, and the people of Des Moines," says Art Center spokesperson Jessica Rowe. "It was a difficult communication problem for the Art Center. Museum people are not used to public meetings and city council debates, and we weren't always pleased with the coverage that the proposal received. Still, we think it was important to have artistic issues discussed in the newspapers and public meetings.

Des Moines would not have been talking about art without this controversy."

Artist Siah Armajani hesitated to discuss his role in the uncompleted Iowa project, but notes some basic differences between it and the Minneapolis garden.

"In Minneapolis, vacant land was improved. There was general agreement on the need for a park, on the need to display the Walker's sculpture collection, and the need for a bridge to connect the new park to the rest of the system. The sculpture garden became a platform for consensus.

"In Des Moines a private museum seemed to be annexing a mature, independent park and developing the space with site-oriented art instead of flowers and trees," he continues. "In any public project you face political and sociai problems, not just artistic choices.

It took a long time to resolve those issues in Des Moines, but ultimately the project will be completed."

Rowe emphasizes that the project is going forward with real understanding and support from the citizens of Des Moines. She also admits that the museum might

do some things differently if the approval process were doesn 't grow out of this land. They're in front of motels time, I talked with Martin more than any man I've all over." In fact, Friedman hoped to preserve intact known. It simply wasn't possible to write down all the to begin tomorrow.

"We would involve more neighborhood and citi- the seven-acre parcel on the Walker's front step. He issues that had to be resolved. Mutual trust was key — zen groups early on in the process," says Rowe. "Most feared the fountain could never be moved once in we both learned what the other meant by 'no'."

Early discussions revolved around philosophy and of the negative public reaction was based on misinfor- place and that any future sculpture garden would have mation." She emphasizes the need for quick commu- to build around it. An orchestrated anti-fountain cam- funding. "The Park Board was financially committed nication as public debate gains momentum, and rec- paign by Walker board members and other "concerned to neighborhood parks and playgrounds, so money for ommended a crash course in the ways of government neighbors" led to huge public debate, irate letters to the the garden had to come from private sources," says for private museum administrators "not used to deal- editor, a victory in the form of a relocated fountain, and Fisher. "Once Martin was convinced of this, it gave the ing with government bureaucracy." Finally, she notes a frigid relationship between the Walker and the Park project new life despite the fact that no one had cash in hand. We also came to an understanding about ownerthat installing the Serra piece outdoors also caused fear Board. among a public that wasn't ready for the monumental, "The debate was brutal. We were on the front page ship: once art was in the park, it became public abstract pieces in a city park. like Watergate," says Friedman. "For me the experi- property even if the museum still held title to the piece. ence was a watershed. I saw it wasn't good enough to That attitude saved us from a lot of turf battles. The art Des Moines' rough road is in stark contrast to the publicly smooth development of the Minneapolis oppose something — no matter how misguided. We wasn't his or mine. It was theirs — the public's."

Promoting a sense of public ownership was also project. "Once the sculpture garden was announced, it needed to advance a plan of our own."

In fact, Friedman had dreamed about using the politically important, according to Friedman. "We seemed inevitable," says Mary Abbe, art critic for the StarTribune, the Minneapolis daily newspaper. "Like barren parkland for years. Beginning with the 1970 tried to nail down the details of planning and finance any endowment campaign, the sculpture garden was a exhibition 9 Artists/9 Spaces, the land had been used without leaving the public out in the cold," he says. "It kind of iceberg: it didn't bob to the surface until its for temporary outdoor installations. In the years be- was a delicate balance. I had to become a tour leader financial base was built. In the last, brief phase, the tween the 1969 demolition of the old museum building and a cheerleader, dragging a model of the garden to and its replacement by the current structure in 1971, innumerable public meetings." Advertisements enpublic was brought in for comment." couraged city residents to "come see the Building that iceberg meant long garden grow." negotiations, and required the cooperaConvincing city and state leaders tion of the Walker, the City of Minnewas also a long process. Fisher and apolis, the Minneapolis Park Board, the Friedman joined their lobbying efforts, Minnesota Department of Transportaa process Fisher described as "putting tion, the Federal Highway Administratwo Rolodexes together . . . . It didn't tion, the Minnesota Landscape Arborehurt that both of us knew the city well." tum, and scores of public and private What really ensured the garden's donors. success were timely infusions of cash Bill Crawford, the district engineer from private sources. A major waterfor the Twin Cities metropolitan area, shed was a gift of $2.3 million from the and a major player in the development McKnight Foundation. "The garden beof the Sculpture Garden's bridge, notes came a great bandwagon," says Fisher. the personal nature of this process.

"It gained such momentum that there "When a big public/private collaborawere no problems that couldn't be overtion succeeds it's not a matter of blind come by talk." bureaucracies bumping into each other.

Friedman, who took primary reCompromises are made by individuals. sponsibility for fund-raising, barnYou need people who look for responstormed the country with a wish list of sible ways to say yes." art, programs, and buildings, trying to Crawford learned to "say yes" while match each with a donor. A little luck spearheading his department's activididn't hurt: Shortly after Siah Armajani ties in half a dozen public/private coldelivered plans for the garden's as-yet laborations, ranging from improved unfinanced bridge, a member of the signage to freeway cloverleafs. The Wheelock Whitney family stopped at Sculpture Garden wasn't the first — or Siah Armajani's "Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge" connects the sculpture garden the Walker for advice about an archithe largest — of these collaborations. and Loring Park in downtown Minneapolis. tect. He saw Armajani's plans and beIn fact, Minnesota is recognized as a came excited. Friedman recalled that national leader in the area of public/ Irene Hixon Whitney had founded a private partnership. A 1982 study, Two Midwestern efforts — in Des community organization known as "The "Public-Private Partnerships in AmeriMoines, Iowa and Minneapolis — Bridge." What could be a more suitable can Cities," identified geographic isolatribute to her? The results of this chance illustrate the pitfalls and possibilities tion, population homogeneity, local meeting was an agreement that the corporations, economic diversity, and that attend the birth of ambitious Whitney family would fund much of the dialogue between government and the Armajani bridge. public art projects. business community as key elements in "I give a lot of credit to the commuMinnesota's successful approach. nity," says Friedman. "It takes self-conThat said, Crawford went on to acknowledge the central role of recently retired Walker the Walker staff grew accustomed to non-traditional fidence to build something like the sculpture garden, director Martin Friedman: "Anyone who has worked venues, holding classes in banks and exhibits in de- to go beyond questions of noise, traffic, and appropriwith Martin knows that he is a sparkplug, a catalyst, partment stores. "We became nomads, learning to do ateness, and grasp an unfolding vision."

"Self-confidence" and "vision" are heady abstracand an organizer. He keeps you on schedule and keeps our work outside the walls of a museum," says tions. If Des Moines fails to fully realize its project, Friedman. "It brought us a new audience." you interested."

Friedman also notes the museum's long commit- does this mean its citizens lack such sterling qualities?

Mary Abbe concurs. "These things don't happen Ultimately, the planning process suggests the imwithout a prime mover. Friedman was well ensconced, ment to discussion of design and city planning, desavvy about the community, and had the respect or scribing the garden as a concrete extension of that portance of more prosaic factors, all of which will be commitment. "Having hosted a number of early ex- crucial if Des Moines is to realize its public art vision: acquiescence of most community leaders."

By the early 1980s, Friedman also had stayed at his hibits and conferences on urban issues, we saw that it good fund raising and committed local funders, the post long enough to outlast an early controversy that was possible for museum people to talk to design perceived need to fill an under-utilized space, visible leadership from an arts administrator, strong personal had derailed plans for the sculpture garden for more professionals. In fact, we came to feel that the museum than a decade. In the early '70s Ben Berger, a wealthy was obliged to address the character of the city, to treat connections between that administrator and the local Minneapolis businessman and longtime park commis- its architecture and planning in exhibits. Psychologi- community, a commitment to public/private partnersioner, decided to donate a fountain to the city. What cally and historically, the museum was prepared for ships by local government, and careful cultivation of better location than the empty lot across from the the issues raised by a collaborative sculpture garden." the public through open meetings, publicity, and a Friedman's plans stayed on hold until a new park design that caters to needs beyond the merely aesWalker/Guthrie complex? This bit of Park Board land had been an eyesore since the late 1960s, when a superintendent, David Fisher, was appointed in the thetic. freeway project sliced through the area, erasing all signs of the public garden that had graced the site since the early years of the century.

On the surface it was a debate about the aesthetic merits of the proposed fountain — a copy of an Australian war memorial which Friedman derided as "a ball on a stick . . . It's sort of mass-reproduced and

early 1980s. "Martin called on me six months after I took over, and though I wasn't in on the Berger fountain debacle, I faced our meeting with apprehension. The Park Board didn'tenjoy having someone tell them what they could and couldn't do with their land," says Fisher.

Despite this, the two men ended up friends. "For a

Chris Waddington is a St. Paul free-lance writer.

His art criticism has appeared in national and regional publications.

21 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

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The central garden space in Noguchi's California Scenario, Costa Mesa, Calif.

(Photos: Glenn Smith)

ISAMU N O G U C H I M U S E U M G A R D E N — LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y. • CALIFORNIA S C E N A R I O — C O S T A MESA, CALIF.

THE NOGUCHI GARDEN AS THEATER B y

G l e n n

S m i t h

of a theater performance, Noguchi involved the garden audience on both physical and subliminal levels.

In this sense, Noguchi's interpretation of sculpture samu Noguchi's erudite personal style of garden design has pioneered both the concept of the garden as theater becomes highly participatory, within garden as a setting for art and the garden as an the public realm. Because of his sensitivity to the expression of sculptural form. As a sculptor, movement of the participant as well as to the symbolic Noguchi understood the inherent nature of the interpretations of the garden forms, the space of his sculptural piece which he believed "lives within its gardens sculpturally evolves in a kinetic performance own space," but he also understood the broader rami- of sensory rhythm. As Noguchi has pointed out, this fications of spatial arrangement as sculpture. In his choreography and unfolding of sculptural space throt gh autobiography, A Sculptor's World, Noguchi states movement and the evolution of symbolic form is that he was "excited by the idea that sculpture creates accomplished "with the participation of mobile man . . . Without a fixed point of perspective all views are space, that shapes intended for this purpose, properly scaled in a space, actually create a greater space." equal, continuous motion with continuous change.

Noguchi's vision was that of the garden as sculpture. The imagination transforms this into a dimension of The development of Noguchi's garden-making the infinite."

Symbolism and meaning are the principles that vision and the progression of his work from that of sculpture within its own space to that of sculpture have guided all of Noguchi's work. These Zen-related within a greater space was, in great part, due to his principles are used extensively in his garden making to work as a set designer for choreographer Martha abstract symbolic concepts into sculptural form while Graham. It is within this body of set design work that also enhancing the deeper meanings of the forms. The the birth of sculptural space as theater began for Noguchi. In 1935 Noguchi designed his first major set for the Martha Graham production of Frontier. This first venture into theater was, notes Noguchi, "the genesis of an idea — to wed the total void of theater space to form an action. This set was the point of departure for all my subsequent theater work: space became a volume to be dealt with sculpturally." This was the origin of his explorations of sculptural space within an expanded dimension, the garden evolving as a theater set.

I

The theater stage and its volume as a spatial void, the performers (singularly and in unison), the performance as a spatial unit of movement, and the audience as observational participant all became abstracted components of the Noguchi garden-making style.

The wall is a signature component of the Noguchi garden, providing enclosure for the garden stage set. These walls, whether formed by architecture or garden structures, serve to contain the placement of sculptural form as performance. It can be said that the evolution of sculptural garden form became the representation of the performer, working together to create a cohesive performance of sculptural forms. But unlike the solely subliminal interaction of the audience with the nuances

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economy of symbolic form and the richness of perceptual meanings create a heightened experiential quality within the Noguchi ideal of greater sculptural space. It is the minimalist symbolic origin of his design forms that creates dynamic sculptural performances within his garden as theater. Using the conceptual vision of a Zen master, the craftsmanship of a sculptor, and the spatial knowledge of an architect, Noguchi has created a diverse array of garden settings for sculpture and gardens as sculpture.

Perhaps the greatest legacy of his talents as both a sculptor and maker of garden settings is the Isamu Noguchi Museum Garden located in Long Island City, N. Y. The museum, which opened in 1985, houses more than 250 pieces of his work. The 9,000-squarefoot garden space displays 27 works within a walled theater setting. The museum is a strikingly austere and pallid triangular concrete block form within a desert of warehouse buildings. The towering skyline of Manhattan across the East River acts as a dramatic backdrop to the museum and garden. This dichotomy of museum form and location shields the oasis within.

The journey into the garden is prefaced by a small, narrow, concrete-block walled room with high ceilings. The space has a few spotlighted sculptural pieces which serve as an introduction to the garden collection beyond. The transitional space is not unlike the theater lobby or foyer, guiding the visitor through space. It is as if Noguchi were providing a short program of the performance space that lay just ahead. Because the room is open to the garden on one end. natural light flows geometrically through the opening to further draw the visitor toward the garden stage.

Upon reaching the sunlit opening, the garden is presented as a minimalist stage set of ivy-covered walls that enclose the garden, a crushed-rock garden floor that delineates the edge of the stage setting for the sculpture display, a minimal selection of trees and small evergreen shrubs, and a central concrete path that moves through the space separating it into two display areas. This is the initial impression of the triangular-shaped garden space. At first glance, the space seems barren, but closer exploration reveals the symbolic

essence of Noguchi's individual sculptures and his delicate spatial choreography, the elements of his theatrical style: the wall as container of form (void) and perception, the location of sculpture as individual performer within the stage setting, and the central pathway as movement generator through space.

While the space is simple in a material and physical sense it is powerfully moving and complex on a subliminal level. Noguchi has allowed the individual pieces of sculpture to stand alone, each in a void of darkness, so that each piece may perform within the mind of the viewer. It is amazing that so many sculptures within a small space maintain their own sense of symbolic presence and individuality.

This is the art of garden making that Noguchi has mastered so well. In this case, the high garden walls and the museum structure are effectively used as boundaries for the visual and physical expansion, the contraction and confinement within the area of sculptural performance. By establishing this basic stage structure, Noguchi choreographed the placement of art works as one would choreograph the placement of dancers on a stage. The museum houses a great number of other significant Noguchi sculptures that would benefit from placement in a garden setting; it is unfortunate that the garden's small size cannot accommodate them. However, this in no way diminishes the power of what Noguchi has created within the confines of a limited space.

Beyond the Isamu Noguchi Museum Garden, there is a large body of other gardens that contribute greatly to the idea of the contemporary sculpture garden. The Billy Rose Sculpture Garden at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem (1965) and the Lillie and Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1986) are further evidence of Noguchi's mastery of garden making as theater and garden setting for art. In both these gardens simplicity of form again reigns and the wall continues to be a recurrent theme as backdrop to sculptural performance. Sculptures are placed on pedestals in front of geometrically sloping walls as if to suggest that each sculpture is free to perform. These walls are also used to choreograph the movement of forms in architectural space as well as lead the visitors through the spaces from one sculptural performance to the next. Although all these spaces fall within the generic definition of the sculpture garden (a setting for the placement of art), their symbolic sculptural qualities propel them beyond the standard into the contemporary realm of the garden as sculpture.

created high, stark, white stucco walls to enclose the other two sides of the space and shield the garden from the adjacent parking structures. This is perhaps the first time that he has used the garden wall to evoke a feeling of expansiveness. Within the white surface of the walls there is an infinite quality of perspective and the essence of endless California landscape.

Indeed, California Scenario is a tribute to the diverse geology and geography of the state of California in abstracted symbolic form. Here Noguchi has created a space that is predominantly garden as sculpture, but through the abstracted depiction of the California landscape, he has also created an inspired array of individual sculptural pieces. The greater space as stage and the sculptural pieces as performers have been sensitively choreographed into a cohesive spatial whole using water as a connective theme: It is the water that becomes of great importance and power as it snakes through the garden like music through a theater production.

The depiction of the California landscape from the northern redwoods to the southern desert lands is placed in a transitional sequence within the garden

dicular to the garden wall gives great significance to the source of the water: As the water rushes down the sloped face of the triangular form it appears as if the water source is emerging from the infinity of the wall, a metaphor for the source of life itself. The water course that meanders through the plaza begins at the base of the water source sculptural piece. Noguchi has artfully placed washed stones along the base of the water course and has hidden water jets that provide a visual display of water movement and sound effects.

At the end of the water course is the sculptural piece "Water Use," a triangular granite form that consumes and ends the water flow. Perhaps this is Noguchi's abstraction of man as consumer of natural resources.

Set away from the water is "The Desert Land" installation. It is expressed as a large circular gravel mound with desert plants. "Land Use" is expressed as an eight-foot-high earth mound covered with honeysuckle plantings and topped by a rectangular granite form. The granite form is an obvious abstraction of architectural structure as development; however, as in the case of "Energy Fountain," this is a weak connection in terms of symbolic placement.

The final sculptural performer within the garden is "The Spirit of the Lima Bean." This sculpture is a tribute to the former agricultural use of the site.

Japanese granite was used, and more than any of the others, this piece is a magnificent reflection of Noguchi the sculptor.

His combination of all these sculptural garden elements has created a performance of inventive form, sensitive materials, and insightful choreography. But it is the infinite spatial dimensions of the white stucco walls that ultimately establish the power base for the effectiveness of the other elements in the garden.

The theater stage and its volume as a spatial void, the performers (singularly and in unison), the performance as a spatial unit of movement, and the audience as observational participant all became abstracted components of the Noguchi garden-making style.â&#x20AC;˘

Noguchi's garden projects have primarily been within the category of gardens as sculpture. In general, the spaces have gained their form from architectural structure and have not been physically accessible. The Gardens for the IBM headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., the Sunken Garden for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and the Sunken Garden for Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza in New York, all completed around 1964, are examples of works that do not provide physical access. These spaces provided for Noguchi the one dominant structural element that has made the majority of his spaces successful â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the wall as the definition of theater set. They are also all viewed from without and from above, and their forms, in keeping with the other Noguchi design signature, are abstractions of symbolic themes that engage the viewer on a subliminal level. These are sculpture gardens that take the viewer on a mental journey through space.

As opposed to Noguchi's purely subliminal works, California Scenario in Costa Mesa, Calif., is perhaps his most powerful expression of garden as sculpture, engaging the user on both a subliminal and physical level. Walls are utilized again to set the theatrical stage for this 1.6-acre garden. Twin office towers of black reflective glass enclose the garden space on two sides and echo the garden in their surfaces. Noguchi has

space, evoking not only the essence of each landscape area but also the subliminal and physical movement as the visitor symbolically journeys from northern to southern California.

The "Forest Walk," an elevated earth mound covered with redwood trees which enclose a sloped surface covered with native California grasses, is the sculptural installation that begins the journey. The focus of this forest expression faces out toward the southern landscape beyond. A pathway ascends the grassed slope from the garden plaza area that is reminiscent of the grass-covered hills of northern California in winter. Adjacent to the forest area is the "Energy Fountain," a futuristic image of the power of water. It is a combination of granite at the base with a stainless steel cone that emerges from the sloping granite base.

Water explodes from the top and rushes down the surface of the steel cone into the base. As a sculptural piece, "Energy Fountain" is a striking presence and contrast to the other sculptural forms, but as a performer within the garden stage, it is somewhat flawed in its relationship as a spatial performer.

"Water Source" is a triangular sandstone sculpture that emerges geometrically from the garden floor to a height of approximately 15 feet. Its placement perpen-

Is the sculpture garden merely a setting for the display of artwork or can the garden as a whole become a sculpture? Contemporary designers have been exploring the dynamics of this question in experimental ways that transcend the traditional definition of the sculpture garden. The new definition and physical representation of the garden has taken on a myriad of titles such as earth art, earthworks, environmental art, and, more recently, ecological art. Garden spaces that fall within these and other contemporary categories have not, for the most part, been very successful. The reasons for these failures are many and varied, but perhaps the most important is a lack of spatial understanding and vision. This is why Noguchi's gardens are of major significance to contemporary garden

making.

Noguchi's explorations into what he termed "greater space" provided him with a substantial grounding in the possibilities of sculpting space. While the theater was the seminal influence in his understanding of the greater spatial realm of landscape, he also experimented with playscapes, imaginary landscape models, play equipment, and abstracted sculptural landscape tables. This endless experimentation and resultant spatial education has produced a collection of richly symbolic garden spaces that speak personally to those who view and use them.

In her recent autobiography Blood Memory, Martha Graham speaks of her respect for Noguchi's design vision. "He took me to images that 1 had never contemplated before and gave new life to works I had created."

And so it is with Noguchi's theater gardens. Walking through them is a journey into another world, a world of richly detailed sculptural forms and subliminal imagery.

Glenn Smith is assistant professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Michigan. He is currently conducting research for a book on the landscape works of Isamu Noguchi.

23 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

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Ammannati and Giambologna, paintings by Pontormo and Botticelli, and arrangement of terraces, ornamental water features, and plantings visually described the rightful position of the Medici heritage and Cosimo's destined place as heir to Florentine rule. Through the art of the garden, we are shown that Cosimo will bring peace and prosperity to Florence and strength in defeating her enemies.

The famous Pratolino near Florence (now known as the Villa Demidoff) was designed by Buontalenti around 1568 to display a dialogue between art and nature as well as an alchemist's search for harmony with the cosmos. Its main axis, marked by the villa's primary entrance road, centrally bisected the garden and residence.

Ornamental water acted as the main organizing feature. Sculpture by Cellini, Ammannati, Tribolo, and Giambologna was linked physically or symbolically to water and sited to reinforce themes in the garden. Each garden room was a complete artistic composition of water, grading, planting, and sculpture. Mythological imagery was the primary force behind the artistic statement.

culture's ideal vision has been characterized throughout history in its gardens. Environmental structure and the presence and placement of artwork in the garden gives a three-dimensional construct of a quintessential paradise, perhaps more revealing than any other cultural manifestation. Study of ancient sculpture gardens, such as those of the Romans, has until recently been undervalued, yet archeologists are now realizing that in their excavations of sculpture and architecture, they often missed the most relevant part of their search: the relationships between art, garden, and society.

It is with this perspective that we must examine the contemporary sculpture "garden," which often has a tenuous relationship to the art within it. Traditional formal gardens had a geometric plan overlaid onto a carefully graded landscape. Spatial sequence, open and closed vistas, and carefully sited sculpture worked together, creating complex relationships which clouded the distinction between art and nature. Italian and Little is left of Castello or Pratolino. Time, neglect, vandalism, French formal gardens, and later the "natural" artifice of bucolic and whims of "fashion" over the centuries have destroyed the English Romantic gardens, were intricate compositions, conoriginal gardens. Most of the important sculpture has been ceived as works of fine art. These gardens encompassed and removed to museums, a context very different from the gardendisplayed architecture, painting, sculpture, and music to their best room galleries the pieces were created for. The garden is impovadvantage. Arts in the garden were not isolated works â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they were erished without the sculpture and, out of context, the sculpture has designed to interact with and unify the garden to help articulate its lost its intended meaning. Both garden and sculpture have been meaning. deprived of the provocative qualities inherent in their original Art displayed outdoors, particularly in the garden, arguably design. reached its pinnacle in the Renaissance gardens of Italy. An explosion of The grand formality of garden design during the 16th and 17th centuries humanistic idealism during the Renaissance encouraged artistic expression in the epitomized by Italian and French styles resulted in an artistic revolt by the English garden, where it was intimately integrated into both the natural and man-made environment. in the late 18th century. Romantic gardens took on "naturalistic" look, where an The old Italian gardens were designed to tell stories. Each garden's iconographi- entirely man-made vision of nature was created to express this bucolic interpretacal program "exhibited" a patron's largesse, family history, humanistic concerns, tion. There were few, if any, formal axes, although axes did exist to organize the or political ambition. This was done symbolically, using elements from nature and garden's layout. The park was designed with sculptural and architectural follies, fine art, resulting in complex relationships between the design of the garden and which revealed themselves at different vantage points as one moved through the commissioned sculpture. Famous gardens at Castello and Pratolino near Florence garden. Yet Romantic gardens drew on the sculptural appearance of ancient demonstrated the link between culture and the character of their sites through Roman, as well as more recent Renaissance, garden ruins, as an inspiration for careful integration of art and nature. No gardens designed at the time have survived many of the follies incorporated into their informal designs. Seemingly "unintact; most, like Pratolino, are in near ruins; or like Castello, depleted of all but their touched" in their appearance, these Romantic gardens were complex in their formal layouts. Without mentally reconstructing them, they are difficult to read. design, and masterful works of art.

The Medici villa Castello was created in 1538 by Nicolo Tribolo to describe the The coherent and intricate design of these traditional pre-modern gardens no virtu and magnificence of Cosimo I, newly appointed longer seems obvious. Sculpture has been removed, Grand Duke of Florence. A young man of 17, Cosimo layouts have been altered, and, of course, the context desperately needed to assure his rivals of his political changed. However, the rolling lawns of the informal Top: Stone works by Richard Serra dot a potency in a precarious political climate. Sculpture by Romantic garden style now seem the closest model hillside near Pistoia.

Inset: One of the remaining original structures at Villa Celle.

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used by contemporary sculpture garden designers.

In the modern era, art has been distanced from traditional mythological sources and from the earth itself.

As the 20th century comes to an end, many contemporary sculptors have tried to re-engage their work with the earth and its processes, or simply reflect upon the power of a site. It is revealing to examine the gardens and means of expression these contemporary artists take.

Sycamores shade a path on the grounds of Villa Celle.

he Villa Celle, near Pistoia, Italy, is a 16th- existing garden. A lack of awareness of, or interest in, century villa with a 19th-century English the rich qualities of the garden is striking: Most seem to Romantic garden. The villa houses a private conceive of the environment as merely soil and space.

Little of the work engages the environment beyond collection of numerous contemporary artworks, and an 20-acre sculpture garden with 28 pieces the superficial, generic sense of water, trees, or space. by significant contemporary sculptors — most known Two works — one by Marta Pan, whose piece of two for their site-specific work — commissioned for the bright-red disks floats upon the lake, and another by Mauro Staccioli, whose giant concrete wedge plays park. with the scale of the large trees — acknowledge the Villa Celle's sculpture garden was established by Guliano Gori, a manufacturer of Italian textiles. Over site, but these pieces could be anywhere. Beverly the past 10 years he has invited a number of well- Pepper's amphitheater, sited low in a ravine with tall known artists to create site-specific works within his walls that cut into part of the hillside, used the material garden. Each of the artists has been asked to select a of the landscape without really interacting with it. Its site for his or her own work, allowing maximum context is not relevant to her amphitheater beyond the obvious economy in grading costs. freedom to express their ideas.

A lake, an island, wild forest, a formal promenade, and several original architectural follies still remain of The old Italian gardens the original park design. A landscape artist known were designed to tell only as "Gambini" designed the English-style garden stories. Each garden's in 1840. Time and neglect have added a patina to the old garden's Romantic character. Thus, a rich palette iconographical program has been offered to environmental art; the garden's "exhibited" a patron's historical framework offers a foil to contemporary largesse, family history, ideas.

Yet in spite of its richness, the new garden fails and humanistic concerns, or the old garden, with its cohesive quality as a work of political ambition. This art, has been lost. Too many new sculptures are imposed on the garden. They do not work together; was done symbolically, rather, they tend to be self-referential at the expense of using elements from their context. The old garden has become clouded and nature and fine art, the new work offers nothing in return for what it has taken. resulting in complex A question arises: What is environmental art and relationships between what is it supposed to tell us? These elements which the design of the garden make up an environment — light and shadow, existing natural and man-made features, sounds, openness and commissioned and enclosure, sequence of experience, relationship of sculpture. one object or place to another, sense of movement, and history of the site—have been generally ignored in the Sol LeWitt's "Cut Cube" can be approached from artists' works at Villa Celle. Most of the work, touted as environmental, only makes meager gestures to- the path above and below the work, but its locality was incidental, as were the sites chosen by Dennis wards engaging the landscape.

Instead, the garden at Villa Celle has become a dot- Oppenheim and Alice Aycock. Their only requireto-dot tour of art, and the whole does not add up to a ments of the landscape were that it be large and open cohesive picture. There is very little mutual intersec- so their sculptures could have plenty of space around tion between the sculpture and garden, the relationship them to maximize visibility. Intriguing pieces, they of new art to old art, and even to the natural environ- would have had more impact if they were discovered ment. The artists have chosen, for the most part, to individually, rather than being adjacent but unrelated work along a path. Richard Long required only ignore the possibility of a dialogue with the past, with the work of other artists, and even with the richness of enough space to make a circular impression on level the site. No "new" contemporary garden has been land, reciprocating his circle of stones in the indoor created by this collection, and the opportunity to gallery. Again, location and character of the site are present new contemporary sculpture garden has been not important to this work. lost.

Built of cream stone layered alternately with green At worst, the garden and landscape seem exploited granite, Robert Morris' "Labyrinth" is reminiscent of by many of the works. This is due in part to the artists local Gothic churches. Labyrinths were often promiworking individually, with no mandate regarding the nent features of traditional gardens and the reference was well taken. Although it was designed to work with the slope, Morris could have used a steeper slope or sunken position, making a viewing platform added at the fringe of the forest unnecessary.

However, some of the sculpture works beautifully with the site. Richard Serra selected the crest and fall of a hillside, where he placed eight large rough-cut stones in the grasses, all with tops angled to complement the incline of the terrain. Placed on a grid, the stones hold the balance between man and the landscape,

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primitive and deliberate.

Spanish sculptor Susana Solano chose an enclosed area for her work, a large Cor-ten steel frame which also speaks of enclosure, hidden secretly in a tangle of trees. Alan Sonfist's "Circle of Time" was sited for its visual association with the old garden and the Tuscan hills beyond. Sonfist's concentric rings describe human history in the region: at the center are prehistoric plantings; a ring of cast bronze branches and thyme mark the culture of the Etruscans; next, a circle of laurel shrubs, followed by a concave ring of local field stones; then barley, which dissolves into the old garden's edge of olive orchards and surrounding hills above.

Ironically, the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay addresses and interacts with the garden without physically engaging it. His bronze basket and plow rests in the orchard, a quote from classical literature hung like a sign from olive branches above. As with Sonfist's piece, it relies more on the narrative of connotative memory than sculptural form.

Site-specific work can make itself relevant to the site by making a number of connections. Traditional materials of the region, historical precedents, the landscape itself, or a particular aspect of it, are all readily available. But simple gestures and references are generally not enough.

Environmental artists aren't expected to be environmentalists, yet a more intimate knowledge of the environment could create a reconciliation with the broken tradition of garden as art. Use of the earth as a material has very powerful connotations, and the surrounding living and spatial context for their work proves as ripe for interpretation today as it has in the past.

Unfortunately, the problems described at Villa Celle are typical of contemporary sculpture gardens. It is clearly a loss of character of the old garden without reciprocity that makes the problem so apparent.

Modern life and our conception of spatial relationships have changed. It should not be expected that our gardens and other works of art emulate those of other eras. All gardens, however, have some inherent meaning. Do contemporary sculpture gardens then reveal a disinterest in a vision of paradise? Or do they speak of a distanced intimacy with the earth which comes from the modern age? That these artists wish to use the earth as a "canvas" for their art reveals their desire to reclaim ties with the power of the physical environment, but disconnected environmental works suggest a lost ability to interact with this power.

Kimberlee Stryker is a landscape architect in Berkeley, Calif.

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individual artist or a collaborative team of visual artists or visual and performing artists. Grants will be awarded, up to $5,000 including honorarium.

Opportunities Exhibition Opportunity Sculpture Outdoors Philadelphia, Pa. Sculpture Outdoors announces an opportunity for artists to exhibit during the International Sculpture Conference in June 1992.

For more information, send stamped, self-addressed envelope to: Marsha Moss, Sculpture Outdoors, 220 Locust St., 27-D, Philadelphia, Pa. 19106; (215) 925-3384

Residency Program for Visual Artists Alternative Worksite/Bemis Foundation Omaha, Neb. Alternative Worksite is a residency program for visual artists. Studio and living accommodations plus monthly stipends are available for residencies of three to six months. Applications are now being accepted for the period of September 1992 through August 1993.

Deadline: March 1, 1992 Eligibility: Open Write or call: Joan B. Batson, Alternative Worksite/Bemis Foundation, 614 S. 11th St., Omaha, Neb. 68102; (402) 341-7130

Ohio Percent-for-Art Public Art Commission Mendenhall Laboratory Renovation Ohio State University Ohio Arts Council Percent for Art Program and The Ohio State University invite artists interested in creating an interior wall-supported installation at Mendenhall Laboratory on the Columbus campus. The preferred medium for this project will be stone, which, outside of its own inherent beauty, will serve as an educational aid.

Deadline: Jan. 6, 1992 Eligibility: Open, except artists employed by the Ohio State University.

For prospectus and more information, write or call: Carol Snyder, The Ohio Arts Council, Percent for Art Program/Mendenhall Lab Project, 727 E. Main St., Columbus, Ohio 43205; (614)466-2613.

Site Works Arts Festival of Atlanta The Arts Festival of Atlanta is seeking imaginative proposals for temporary works of sculpture to be placed in park sites selected by the artists. The proposal may be submitted by an

26 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

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Deadline: March 2, 1992 Eligibility: Open Write or call: Site Works, Arts Festival of Atlanta, 501 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta, Ga. 30308; (404) 885-1125.

Art in Transit MARTA Rail Station Placards Arts Festival of Atlanta Works by printmakers are being sought for placement in the area's MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) stations during the 1992 Arts Festival of Atlanta. All subject matter appropriate for a public setting will be considered. Each selected artist will receive an honorarium of $100.

Deadline: Feb. 3, 1992 Eligibility: Open Write or call: Art in Transit, Arts Festival of Atlanta, 501 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta, Ga. 30308; (404) 885-1125.

Public Art Opportunities Phoenix Arts Commission Members of the Public Art staff of the Phoenix Arts Commission are available to make studio visits to local artists interested in discussing their work and how they can participate in the Public Art Program.

To make an appointment, call Jody Ulich at (602) 262-4637.

Euents Fourth Annual Carlsbad Outdoor Art Exhibition Stagecoach Park Carlsbad, Calif.

Oct. 3,1991-Jan. 1,1992 The City of Carlsbad continues its series of temporary outdoor exhibitions with Art and Architecture: Crossing the Boundaries, an exhibition of six works created by architects who are also artists or by collaborative teams of architects and artists.

For more information, contact: Jim Wilstermann, Public Art Coordinator, Carlsbad Arts Office, City of Carlsbad, 1200 Carlsbad Village Drive, Carlsbad, Calif. 92008; (619)434-2920.

FALL/WINTER

1991

Public Rrt Fund Schedule Martti Aiha Doris Freedman Plaza Fifth Avenue and 60th Street New York, N.Y. Commissioned work for the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, January-June 1992.

Presented by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Finnish Foundation for the Visual Arts.

"Liberty Prop" Jeffrey Cole and David Schafer City Hall Park New York, N.Y. "Liberty Prop" is a multifaceted sculptural installation created specifically for City Hall Park by the collaborative team of architect Jeffrey Cole and artist David Schafer. The piece addresses ideas about freedom of speech, democracy, and the dissemination and consumption of information. July-December 1991.

"Bill of Rights" William Fulbrecht Flatbush Avenue and Seventh Avenue Brooklyn, N.Y. A series of ten markers, originally exhibited by the Public Art Fund at five locations throughout lower Manhattan, have been moved to a single traffic island on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. The text of each marker describes each of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.

"Modern Head" Roy Lichtenstein South End Avenue and Liberty Street Battery Park City New York, N.Y. "Modern Head" is presented by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Battery Park City Authority, the James Goodman Gallery, and the Jeffrey Loria Gallery Inc. May 1991May 1992.

"TV Public Service Announcement on AIDS" Bing Lee and Garson Yu Nationwide television distribution For their 30-second television spot, Lee and Yu will utilize the ancient Chinese board game Go as a metaphor for the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The completed message will be broadcast in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean to play on various Asian cable channels nationwide.

Artworks: an Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition Flushing Meadows Corona Park Queens, N.Y. The Public Art Fund Inc., in collaboration with the Flushing Meadows Corona Park Administration Office, is initiating an outdoor sculpture program that will feature changing

sculptural installations by 10 to 15 artists yearly at selected locations throughout the park.

For more information on any of the Public Art Fund projects, contact: Public Art Fund, 1285 Avenue of the Americas, third floor. New York, N.Y. 10019-6071; (212) 541-8423

Alliance for the Arts New York, N.Y. The Alliance for the Arts will produce a report on the problems of artists with AIDS and make a recommendation for a course of action addressing the needs of this community. The Alliance is seeking information on issues such as: What is the impact on the survival of artists' work? How do artists gain access to health care and insurance coverage? How do artists find adequate, affordable legal representation for estate planning?

What services do artists need, especially those who are emerging or mid-career, in relation to the AIDS crisis?

If you are interested in this project or have something to contribute, contact: Patrick Moore, Alliance for the Arts, 330 West 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10036; (212)947-6340

Papago Park/City Boundary Project Phoenix Arts Commission After a four-month construction schedule the Papago Park/City Boundary project at Galvin Parkway and McDowell Road is nearing completion. Project artists Jody Pinto and Steve Martino installed the finishing touches and landscaping to the 240-foot work in October. A dedication for the project will be held next June during the summer solstice.

Call or write: Phoenix Arts Commission, 323 W. Roosevelt, #A-100, Phoenix, Ariz. 85003; (602) 262-4637

Courses, Classes, and Symposia "Public Art, Artist and Spectator" Walker Art Center Minneapolis, Minn.

Jan. 9 - Feb. 6,1992 Pat Benning, public artist, will examine what public art is and why it is unlike any other historical art phenomenon, noting the distinction between public art and art in public places. This course is offered through the University of Minnesota Compleat Scholar Program in cooperation with the Walker Art Center.

Write or call: Education Department, Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Minneapolis, Minn. 55403; (612) 375-7610.

Write or call: Education Department, Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Minneapolis, Minn. 55403; (612) 375-7610.

Lecture Series on Public Sculpture in America Telfair Academy Savannah, (ia.

January-March 1992

Outdoor Sculpture Symposium Buffalo, N.Y. June 2-3,1992

Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences announces the second half of its Lecture Series on Public Sculpture in America. All lectures begin at 8 p.m. in the museum's Rotunda Gallery and are free. Funding provided by the Gilmer Lecture Fund.

The Institute of Museum Services (IMS) has awarded a Professional Services Program grant to the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation (FAIC) to conduct a symposium on the maintenance of outdoor sculpture. A major goal of the symposium is to develop collaborative, cost-effective strategies for managing the care of outdoor sculpture collections at museums and in a wide range of public spaces.

Write or call: American Institute for Conservation, 1400 16th St. N.W., Suite 340, Washington, D.C. 20036; (202) 232-6636

Jan. 28: "Heroes on Horses: The Equestrian Monument in America," Dr. Lauretta Dimmick Feb. 25: "Twentieth-Century Transformations: Monuments to Modernism," Dr. Roberta Tarbell March 31: "New Forms: Art in the Public Interest," Dr. Arlene Raven Write or call: Harry DeLorme, Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, P.O. Box 10081, Savannah, Ga. 31412; (912)232-1177.

Public Art Review

Coming in Issue 7: Spring/Summer 1992 FOLK

ART

FORECAST: 1991 PUBLIC ART AFFAIRS Minnesota Artists Selected: R&D Stipends Susan Milnor to develop a computer software educational tool exploring wetland issues, imageries, and complexities of wetlands; to be utilized in a school setting and to influence artists' own work.

Jeffrey Rabkin to use photography to explore the issues of abandoned and condemned houses and their impact on the neighborhood and their representation of greater social problems.

MUSEUM PERCENT FOR ART/ ART IN PUBLIC PLACES Mailing List Labels Package Package Includes: - Mailing List Labels (160)

Public Projects Lynn Hambrick installed a multimedia presentation incorporating visuals and sound, addressing the problem of violence against women and challenging traditional artistic modes. (Loring Park, Minneapolis, Minn., Sept. 27-29,1991)

Marilyn Lindstrom and Walter Griffin community artistis developing a public work of art designed and created by neighborhood youth: a passageway of visual elements between two neighborhoods. (Minneapolis, Minn., summer/fall 1991)

Jeffrey Bartlett designed an exterior lighting installation bringing traditionally interior theatrical lighting to an exterior public space. (Shubert Theater, Minneapolis, Minn., Oct. 12-Nov. 10,1991)

Laura Migliorino creating a two-billboard piece exploring issues of AIDS, homophobia, and viruses of racism and sexism. (Interstate 94, Rogers, Minn., May 1992)

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La Placita (Photo: Susan Warner) 1990 recipient Susan Warner worked with neighborhoods on St. Paul's west side to create a temporary tile wall and bench.

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