What is art? What is the purpose of a park? And who gets to decide such things?
The recent controversy over a proposed, temporary addition to Northampton’s Pulaski Park has raised all sorts of elemental questions about aesthetics, public spaces and politics.
In March, Ann Jon, a Danish sculptor who lives and works in the Berkshires, offered to erect one of her sculptures in the recently renovated downtown park. Made of steel and titled Arch II, the towering piece is 8 feet 10 inches high and 14 feet 6 inches long, and seems to adhere to Jon’s statement on her personal website that “For A Sculpture To Move A Viewer, The Viewer Has To Move.”
But what if the viewer doesn’t want to move? What if the “viewer” wants to use the park to play Frisbee or soccer instead? Or what if the viewer would rather sit in the park’s café section — the proposed site of the sculpture for one year — and just appreciate … well, the view?
An immovable sculpture would obstruct that. As Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz told the Daily Hampshire Gazette: “We recently spent a lot of time renovating the park with a major emphasis on public space, green space and flexible space. My immediate reaction to plopping a sculpture down was that it might impact that.”
Erecting, plopping … call it what you will. But words do matter here. More to the point, wording matters, and currently the sculpture in question doesn’t have a place in the park — or in the policy. As Brian Foote, executive director of the Northampton Arts and Culture Department, explained to the Gazette, the city had not previously explored the process of assessing art that’s gifted to the city versus created for it. Simply put, there was no codified policy for handling donated art.
That’s ultimately why the Northampton Arts Council rejected the “gift,” which would be on loan to the city with a potential sale price of $50,000 at the end of the term. But there were other issues: In addition to requesting a $1,000 payment from the city should the sculpture be accepted, Jon also asked Northampton to cover costs to transport the arch from Becket, as well as any insurance required.
As council member George Myers pointed out, the idea of letting a single artist dictate the terms of a public art installation with no input or submissions from the larger community would violate the “fair and open process” the council strives for when reviewing proposals. “It would be unfair for us to take on a project without giving other people the opportunity to weigh in and have their own work seen,” he said.
Presented with all of these potential problems and price points, the Arts Council was more interested in buying time — to decide how to handle art gifted to the city and to thoughtfully develop policy to support their decision. Foote said that they’re looking to other cities, such as Austin, Texas, for examples of how they deal with loaned versus donated art.
For the record, Jon told the Gazette that she also valued the public’s input regarding her sculpture: “If it’s in a public place, there should definitely be a chance for the public to have a say.”
And in the end, she did bestow a gift on the city — in the form of an important conversation about art. Her proposal highlighted a gap in the council’s review process, and it’s one they’re currently addressing. The public should have a chance to propose its own art, and indeed the council began accepting applications from local artists for its
ArtsEZ Grant Round last month, with a deadline of May 18.
We support the council’s decision to take its time developing good policy regarding gifted art, and we also encourage local residents to apply for an arts grant. This spring, the Northampton Arts Council will award up to $20,000 to projects in dance, film/video, literature, mixed media, music, schools, theater and visual arts — and, yes, that includes sculpture.
Who knows? Maybe somewhere in the Valley is the next Richard Serra.