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  • From: Janet Kagan <jkagan AT nc.rr.com>
  • To: chpac-staff AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Chpac-staff] Phoenix: Resolved!
  • Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2007 00:16:11 -0500

Dear CHPAC

I thought that you would like to read the editorial that appeared this week in the Arizona Republic: extraordinarily impressive!

Warmest wishes

Janet



Thursday's Arizona Republic editorial page...

Art triumphs

Here's a simple test of the Phoenix City Council's wisdom in approving a giant steel sculpture that will float over a new downtown park. 

Does everybody like it? 

No. 

That's the right answer. The worst choice would be a major piece of public art that's too bland to raise anyone's hackles. 

Metro Phoenix is young, dynamic and jockeying for position among long-established cities. 

This is a place where people come for a fresh start. They're willing to take risks. 

Artist Janet Echelman's sculpture is an ethereal funnel of steel netting, 100 feet across and 65 feet tall. Inspired by the saguaro blossom, it will be suspended from three steel towers in Civic Space park, north of Van Buren Street between Central and First avenues. 

Moving with the wind, lit up at night, the sculpture promises to appear as bold and improbable as our giant metropolitan area in the desert.

Like any good artwork, it will challenge us. We'll admire it, revile it, enjoy it, poke fun at it and take visitors to see it. In the end, if the experience about other controversial public art is an indication, we won't be able to imagine Phoenix without it. 

Unfortunately, the project comes just as the city faces a budget crunch. The public needs to understand that funding comes from the "percent for art" program, a legally restricted pool of money. It's a set-aside from the capital budget, completely separate from the city's day-to-day operations. 

The total price tag is, for the scale of this project, surprisingly small: about $2.4 million, less than a quarter of the price of a movie ticket per Phoenix resident. 

The reality is that this artwork will be its own small economic dynamo, adding to the attraction of downtown Phoenix and spurring sales-tax revenues. 

Yet it almost got short-circuited. 

City staff wanted to pull the plug on the project, taking it off the council agenda. The reasons were thin: possible delays to park construction, questions about the materials in the sculpture and, no doubt, the prospect of controversy. 

Fortunately, the arts community and others involved in downtown planning raised a healthy ruckus. The City Council insisted on taking the proposal through the process. 

And approved it. 

Council members could have wimped out. They could have settled for a boring work that provoked nothing stronger than a yawn. 

Now, they need to gird themselves for slings, arrows, and guffaws when the sculpture goes up about a year from now.

Their biggest shield should be this: The knowledge that the best public art often sparks the most heated controversy.

 



  • [Chpac-staff] Phoenix: Resolved!, Janet Kagan, 12/24/2007

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