Yesterday, the Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation announced a handful of new donations to their capital campaign totalling, oh, $9 million, which brings the fundraising effort within $17 million of completing its goal. So my question: does that remaining $17 million include funds required to install the art planned for the park — you know, the bit that will make it attractive like Chicago’s Millenium Park (Woodall’s oft-cited model)? Or does the money needed for the art have to be raised in addition to that remaining $17 million? Here’s what a park spokesperson I asked said:
The art piece is separate from the $17 million goal. It will happen, and they are putting a process together to review how to select the art. It could happen between now and 2012, it might happen after the park is open. It’s sort of dependent on a donor being passionate about naming the iconic art feature.
Fair enough (though I hope the artist, not the donor gets to name the piece). So after the $17 million is raised, there will need to be additional funds raised to fund the art, which is unfortunate, and not because we all love us some art in parks. Rather, it is because it means the Woodall Rodgers Park’s overall design philosophy is quite different than Millenium Park’s. As someone who was close to the Millenium Park planning and development once told me, Chicago’s park was initially designed with the art installations in mind, and it was the art — the now legendary Plensa and Kapoor installations (the fountain and the bean) — that drove the formation of the rest of the park. The park was imagined “art-first” because the art created a context for the park’s funtionality, it was the spatial engine. Woodall is taking a much more conventional approach — the art is an “add-on,” a “feature.” It is something you “do” in the park not the thing that “is” the park. The Woodall Rodgers Park is still a very promising project, and the comparison with Millenium is not entierly fair. Millenium is a completely exceptional park. It is, in many ways, the park of the 21st century city. Woodall may still be a very good park, but we should start to hold our city boosters to a standard of exceptionality. And in that sense, this is a lost opportunity.
Park designed by the Office of James Burnett, rendering by Michael McCann.
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4 comments
It is something you “do” in the park not the thing that “is” the park.
Can someone explain that to me? The park has the potential to bring local artists to the Arts District, which is something sorely lacking there. The only event mentioned to this point is the mayor’s fitness initiative, which could happen in any of our parks and brings absolutely nothing special to this location. It would be nice to hear that there are plans to have the park as an open place that invites local artists to work and even sell their art. We’ll see if Dallas has any real vision or it turns out to be another abject failure, which seems to be a dallas specialty.
In short, what I mean is that the art in the park is not simply an attraction, but that it is something that affects or forms the context of the experience of the park. In Millennium Park, the art pieces are the park’s organizational elements, not only of the park’s design, but of the way life circulates through the space. In this sense, to be in the park is to participate in some way – consciously or not – with those elements. By “do,” I meant to refer to the deliberate act of apprehending a work as the primary way of engaging with a work or art (i.e. looking at a piece sculpture sitting in a grassy area, which is, of course, a perfectly fine way to encounter certain work). It is just my opinion that this kind of civic project, especially given its intended function of being the glue between downtown and uptown, would have been better served if it was conceived from the outset as an art-driven project so that the park space could have been activated, organized, and defined by the work – the park “is” the art.
I’m not sure if I agree with you that the park should display local art for local art’s sake. Also, I’m not sure what the value is in having local artists work or sell their art in the park. It sounds like what you are describing is a kind of local art bazaar (which may work in the context of an occassional festival in the park). A park should function like a public living room. I don’t like to buy things while I’m relaxing in my living room, but I do like sipping c0cktails, sharing snacks, and chatting with friends – and perhaps glancing at or considering the art that makes the most sense in the given space. Also, because it is my living room, it is art that I’ve grown familiar with – have a particular kind of relationship with – because I always see it when I am in my living room. This is the great luxury of public art: we can live with it like the work in our homes; we can remain in conversation with it over the years.
The art for the park should engage the project of the park: to serve as a vibrant, functioning public gathering space and to unite uptown and downtown. If a local artist can come up with work that does that – and I know there are many artists in this town who are more than capable of such a project or have worked such projects in the past – then I’m all for local art. But we should be primarily concerned about the depth with which whatever art goes into the space engages the park’s fundamental project, and not where it comes from. That’s not a slight on local art – it is just an indication of how confident I am in the quality of our local artists. On a level playing field, many of them can compete. Skewing the field by forcing the park planners to accept local because it is local does a disservice to our local artists by undervaluing them.
As much as you try, there is still a lot of condescension about local art and its place in our more prominent settings. It might also be noted that we have plenty of “festivals” already. What we don’t have is local artists working and being embraced by the Arts District on any significant scale. The Art Love Magic folks have made the best effort yet by working with the DMA, but it isn’t highly visible. The Deck Park could be such a place, but one wouldn’t want to ruin your ‘living room” with the art and artists of Dallas, now would we?
You’re right, increasing local artists’ role in the arts district should be discussed. The AD is basically a collection of institutions. Can you offer an example of an arts institution from another city that engages local art in the way you hope the AD would?