Dialogues in Public Art

468 Pages·2000·64.725 MB·English

by  Tom Finkelpearl

V i t o A c c o n c i
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a D a v i d A v a l o sDialogues
l Denise Scott Brown
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R u f u s L . C h a n e y
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Dialogues in Public Art u M e l C h i n
Tom Finkelpearl e D o u g l a s C r i m p
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s P a u l o F r e i r e Public
By the 1990s, public art had evolved far beyond
i A n d r e w G i n z e l
the lonely monument on an open plaza. Now n
public artists might design the entire plaza, create L i n n e a G l a t t
an event to alter the social dynamics of an urban P Art
L o u i s H o c k
environment, or help to reconstruct a neighbor- u
R o n J e n s e n
hood. Dialogues in Public Art presents a rich blend b
of interviews with the people who create and K r i s t i n J o n e s
l
experience public art—from an artist who mounted i
c
three bronze sculptures in the South Bronx to the
A
bureaucrat who led the fight to have them
removed; from an artist who describes his work r
as a “cancer” on architecture to a pair of architects t
F
who might agree with him; from an artist who
i
formed a coalition to convert twenty-two derelict n
k
row houses into an art center/community
Tom Finkelpearl
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revitalization project to a young woman who got
l M a y a L i n
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her life back on track while living in one of the p 5
e R i c k L o w e 8
converted houses. 9
a 6
J a c k i e M c L e a n 1
r 5

The twenty interviews are divided into four parts: l
F r a n k M o o r e 1
0
Controversies in Public Art, Experiments in Public /
2
Jagoda Przybylak
Art as Architecture and Urban Planning, Dialogues 4
/
0
The MIT Press on Dialogue-Based Public Art Projects, and Public A s s a t a S h a k u r 1
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Art for Public Health. Tom Finkelpearl’s introductory
M i c h a e l S i n g e r
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 essay provides a concise overview of changing
E l i z a b e t h S i s c o
http://mitpress.mit.edu attitudes toward the city as the site of public art.
A r t h u r S y m e s
Tom Finkelpearl is Program Director of PS 1 M i e r l e L a d e r m a n
0-262-56148-4
Contemporary Art Center in New York City. From
,!7IA2G2-561488!:t;K;k;K;k U k e l e s
1990 to 1996, he was Director of New York City’s
R o b e r t V e n t u r i
Percent for Art Program.
Krzysztof Wodiczko
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Dialogues
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Public Art
ii The MIT Press . Cambridge, Massachusetts . London, England
iii
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Tom Finkelpearl
Interviews with: Paulo Freire Frank Moore
Andrew Ginzel Jagoda Przybylak
Vito Acconci Linnea Glatt Assata Shakur
John Ahearn Louis Hock Michael Singer
David Avalos Ron Jensen Elizabeth Sisco
Denise Scott Brown Kristin Jones Arthur Symes
Rufus L. Chaney Maya Lin Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Mel Chin Rick Lowe Robert Venturi
Douglas Crimp Jackie McLean Krzysztof Wodiczko
©2000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Frutiger by Graphic Composition, Inc.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Finkelpearl, Tom.
Dialogues in public art : interviews with Vito Acconci, John Ahearn ... / Tom Finkelpearl.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-06209-7 (alk. paper)
1. Public art—United States. 2. Art, Modern—20th century—United States. 3. Art—
Commissioning—United States. 4. Community art projects—United States. 5. Artists—
United States—Interviews. I. Acconci, Vito, 1940– II. Title.
N8835 .F56 2000
701’.03—dc21
v 99-050079
i
v
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u
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n
in
g
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id
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o
This book is n
R
dedicated e
c
t
to the o
O
memory of n
ly
Bolek Greczynski (1951–1995)
Founder of the Living Museum at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center
and
Paulo Freire (1921–1997)
Theorist and practitioner of dialogue
Preface viii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction:The City as Site 2
I Four Controversies in II Four Experiments in
Public Art Public Art as Architecture
52 and Urban Planning
148
Interviews
Interviews
Douglas Crimp
on Tilted Arc Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi
60 on Art in Architecture
154
John Ahearn
on the Bronx Bronzes and Vito Acconci
Happier Tales on Art, Architecture, Arvada, and StoreFront
80 172
Arthur Symes: Linnea Glatt and Michael Singer
Fighting the Bronx Bronzes on Designing the Phoenix Solid Waste
102 Management Facility
196
Maya Lin:
Landscapes and Memorials Ron Jensen
110 on Commissioning the Phoenix Solid Waste
Management Facility
David Avilos, Louis Hock, and
220
Elizabeth Sisco
on Welcome to America’s Finest Rick Lowe
Tourist Plantation on Designing Project Row Houses
126 234
Assata Shakur
on Living in Project Row Houses
vi 258
v
ii
R
u
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n
in
g
S
id
e
o
n
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III Five Dialogues on IV Two Efforts in Public Art for e
c
t
Dialogue-Based Public Health o O
n
Public Art Projects 378 ly
270
Interviews
Interviews
Mel Chin
Paulo Freire: on Revival Field
Discussing Dialogue 384
276
Dr. Rufus L. Chaney
Mierle Laderman Ukeles on Revival Field
on Maintenance and Sanitation Art 408
294
Frank Moore
Jagoda Przybylak on the AIDS Ribbon
on Alien Staff 418
324
Jackie McLean
Krzysztof Wodiczko on Making the AIDS Ribbon at the Artist
on Alien Staff and Homeless Collaborative
336 438
Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel
on Mnemonics
352
Index 446
Preface
Dialogues in Public Art tells the story of a selected group of public art projects
through interviews with a range of artists, architects, bureaucrats, and others whose
lives have been affected by these projects. This book does not set out to be an au-
thoritative text on public art, but raises a set of critical issues from an unusually broad
set of perspectives. The book is meant for anyone interested in art outside the walls
of the museum: beginners in the field of public art, students, artists, and scholars
alike. The book includes the most extensive information yet published on many pro-
jects, and these are interesting stories. It is my opinion that public art is the most
dynamic field in contemporary artistic practice, but also the most frustrating. My
conflicted relationship with public art was the impetus to publish this book. When I
was director of the Percent for Art Program in New York City (1990–1996), I felt that
very few people outside the immediate communities we were working in knew about
most of the projects we completed, and I wanted to get the word out. At the same
time, working on this project gave me a bit of a buffer from the disasters. When
something went wrong, I could comfort myself by thinking how interesting it might
be to include in this book.
Through selected firsthand accounts, Dialogues in Public Artchronicles a pe-
riod in which artists, administrators, and communities have reinvented the field of
public art. Since modernism effectively segregated art to the museum context, there
was no recent tradition to draw upon when hundreds of Percent for Art laws were
enacted across the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Suddenly, there was a fund-
ing source for contemporary art at practically every firehouse, park, library, and gov-
ernment office building in the country, interest in large-scale projects at corporate
headquarters, and a number of nonprofit organizations dedicated to sponsoring
public art projects. For better or worse, a new professional category had emerged.
Quiet successes and well-publicized disasters ensued.
After an introduction that creates an historical context for the current state
of affairs, Dialogues in Public Artis divided into four sets of interviews: I: Four Con-
troversies in Public Art; II: Four Experiments in Public Art as Architecture and Urban
Planning; III: Five Dialogues on Dialogue-based Public Art Projects; and IV: Two Efforts
in Public Art for Public Health. Each section includes voices from within and outside
viii the art world.
The interviews in the first part focus on four projects that met with signifi- ix
cant controversy: Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc,John Ahearn’s three bronzes in the South
Bronx, Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and Welcome to America’s Finest
P
Tourist Plantationby David Avalos, Louis Hock, and Elizabeth Sisco. Controversies led re
f
a
to the removal of Serra’s TiltedArcand Ahearn’s bronzes, while bureaucratic inter- ce
vention threatened the installation of Lin’s memorial and led to the installation of
a second, realist sculpture on the site. Avalos, Hock, and Sisco, on the other hand,
planned for and welcomed controversy as a part of their project. Although these pro-
jects have been extensively documented, this book adds new perspectives to each, in
a series of five interviews. Douglas Crimp, one of Richard Serra’s greatest supporters
at the time, reflects upon the Tilted Arc controversy and what has changed in the
decade since the Arc’s removal. John Ahearn describes the process that led him to re-
quest that his Bronzes be removed from their site in the South Bronx, while Arthur
Symes, a vocal opponent of the sculptures, discusses why he found the work so of-
fensive. Maya Lin discusses her memorial in the context of her practice as an artist,
and her insistence upon placing it in the context of her landscape projects sheds new
light on the nature of the project and its relationship with its audience. Avalos, Hock,
and Sisco describe how they used the bus poster they designed as a catalyst for pub-
lic discussion of the role of undocumented workers in San Diego’s tourist economy.
The second series of interviews, Four Experiments in Public Art as Architec-
ture and Urban Planning, discusses one of the directions that public art took in the
wake of the controversies like that encountered by Serra—use-oriented work that
moves away from traditional definitions of art and toward landscape design, archi-
tecture, and planning. The section begins with an interview with architects Denise
Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, in which they discuss their uneasiness with the im-
position of art in the public design process. Sculptor Vito Acconci speaks of how he
has managed to infiltrate architectural design in his artistic practice. Michael Singer
and Linnea Glatt discuss their design of the Solid Waste Management Facility in
Phoenix, Arizona, while Ron Jensen, the former Director of Public Works for Phoenix,
discusses the process that led to hiring two artists with little architectural background
to be the lead designers on a multimillion dollar facility. The Solid Waste Manage-
ment Facility is one of the few instances where the design and planning decisions in
a public building were made by artists. Finally, Rick Lowe and Assata Shakur tell the
story of Project Row Houses, an art project that transformed twenty-two derelict
shotgun-style houses into a contemporary art exhibition space, housing for single