Historically, artists were the primary designers of the public domain. The work of Michaelangelo, Bernini and others provide examples of how art and design were married, each part of a continuum in which one discipline was a natural extension of another. As the rise of the "professions"-- planning, architecture, landscape architecture, engineering among others-- gained momentum, what was once a continuum began to break into more distinctly defined constituent segments. As each profession marked its territory, an unfortunate effect was that the artist role was often removed from the equation or limited to one of reaction rather than integral involvement. An effort was made in the 1960's and 1970's to reintroduce "art" into the environment by placing art pieces in public places-- an activity later criticized as "plop art," since the resulting art did not necessarily respond to the particulars of its place and was often commissioned independent of its context.
Today, public art endeavors have come full cycle, attempting to integrate art more fully into planning and design activities. While most would agree that communities and their environments stand to benefit from the return of art to its historical involvement in place-making, the effort has resulted in a merging and at times confusion of roles among artists, designers and planners. No longer are artists only confined to making "pieces," their role now extends to all of an environment, including its purely functional elements. In addition to stone and steel, their media now include public dialogue and debate. They have "clients," sign contracts, attend meetings, and orchestrate teams of various disciplines. The typical public artist's studio is becoming more like a designer's office than a painter's loft.
The first of these currents have produced such compelling works as Walter De Maria's Lightening Field and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, in which the artist's response to the environment falls somewhere between a grand gesture in an "outdoor gallery" and total integration with the context. The second current of community facilitation resulted in such installations as Robert Morris' Earthwork, which reclaimed a Seattle gravel pit for a community park. Artists are realizing the artistic opportunity of the environment and are eager and willing initiates into the planning and design process. Artists are now involved in master planning, as prime consultants for public participation programs and as team leaders for design projects. Artists now have professional responsibilities similar to other design professionals and their involvement is seen by many as a critical component of shaping our environment. The job may be the same, but do artists do something different from what planners do? Do artists add tangible value to planning and design endeavors?
For instance, for Santa Monica's Beach Improvement Group Project (BIG), the city tapped a variety of funding sources to design and implement more than $12 million worth of improvements to three miles of the city's coastline (see Illustration 1). These include city and county resources and the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), as well as the percentage for art. The project was approached as a collaborative effort among departments within the city, and the design team was structured similarly. Public artist Jody Pinto worked with landscape architects, architects, and engineers from the outset of the project, and the effort is resulting in truly integrated "functional art." The division between the design disciplines cannot be read in the work, as no one item bears the imprint of a single signature. Perhaps as significant, the artist's recommendations are exempt from "value engineering" efforts-- those cost-cutting measures that eliminate the project's "frivolous," usually aesthetic, costs. If the art is cut from the project, so are the funds that support it. Funding is linked to the art.
Clearly one of the benefits is the ability to leverage additional. If money is one benefit, another has to be public relations.
Because of local activism, the City of San Diego adopted a precedence setting Council Policy nearly a decade ago that legislates artist involvement in capital improvement projects. There is no set percentage devoted to art, rather a requirement to incorporate the discipline at the project's inception. Therefore, integration is encouraged and the artist's role is negotiable. Two parallel endeavors illustrate the effect of this policy. The North Park district was one of the first neighborhoods to formally adopt policies in their Community Plan that require artist involvement in all redevelopment projects. Shortly thereafter on a site specific scheme within the same neighborhood, the North Park Community Park Plan was led by artist collaborative Stone Paper Scissors (Lynn Susholtz and Aida Mancillas), who in turn hired a landscape architect to perform the technical tasks and to work in conjunction with them on developing a concept. The community felt that the artist best represented its needs during the master planning process. The artists' rapport with the community, combined with the widely held perception that they did not have a specific agenda, enabled the project to sail smoothly through the local approvals process.
Compatibility and positive visibility is another benefit an artist can contribute to a project. Substantial public investment is devoted to infrastructure improvements and support services required to enable a region to function. Sometimes these improvements can be intrusive to neighborhoods, disruptive to daily life or unpleasant in their operations. The renovation of the Alvarado Water Filtration Plant in the City of San Diego provides a good example. Here, an artist's involvement spurred an entirely different outcome to a mechanical solution. During a conversation with the artist, Robert Millar, the engineer had wondered aloud about revealing the process by which clean water moves out of the plant, but had assumed that it could not be done under standard issue treatment facilities. Yet, when the artist encouraged this creative approach, and enabled the engineer to go beyond his traditional boundaries, it was met with great enthusiasm. The resultant plant will become a showpiece for combined technology, art and design.
Good public relations can be invaluable, especially in a controversial building project or planning decision. An artist can act as a goodwill ambassador or as a persuasive voice for aesthetics. Boston's Central Artery Project with its extraordinary program of public art has attracted glowing reviews, locally and world-wide. The Artery Arts Program of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project commissions art projects, both permanent and temporary, to enhance the nation's largest highway project. Temporary installations, intended for particular phases of construction, have eased the impact of roadwork by creating orientation, repeating the message that Boston is open for business during construction, enhancing pedestrian and motorist detours, and injecting human interest, humor and visual delight throughout the many years of construction disturbance. Public art is intended to provide relief and to demystify the construction process, while building public support for this complex infrastructure endeavor.
If opportunities for additional funding, good public relations and education are the benefits of public art, the risks are as real and daunting as the benefits are enticing.
The controversy associated with artist Andrea Blum's piece in Carlsbad, California provides a disconcerting example of how things can go wrong, even when the process is right. In this case, the public process proceeded smoothly through the city's channels until installation. After the piece was completed, a small group of people used the media to unravel prior support. Community members who disliked the installed piece led a campaign that galvanized community opposition. Public disillusionment mounted and grew so forceful that politicians were threatened with recall elections if they did not take a stand to remove what they felt was an offending work. Bitter sentiment was aimed not only at the art, but also at the public planning process that sanctioned it. The stakes are much higher than implementing an unpopular project: experiences like these undermine a community's confidence in collective decision making. And the visibility of such controversies only makes the demoralizing effects more profound.
Another downside, albeit not as palpable, is that artist involvement can veil important technical issues of a planning project. Similarly, art might be used as a "bandage" solution for an otherwise untenable planning problem or, worse, as a "front" for a project that would otherwise be publicly unacceptable. The widely publicized Tilted Arc by Richard Serra fell into this precarious situation and was tainted by the very location for which it was explicitly designed. Commissioned to enhance an inhuman and over-scaled plaza in New York City, the artist's approach was to create discourse through confrontation, reminding pedestrians of the massive, unpleasant space they were in. Tilted Arc was rejected as vehemently as was the plaza space, resulting in the art's eventual removal.
There is also risk in venturing into uncharted territory. Public art is changing the rules on liability and copyrights. An artist does not typically have to maintain the expensive liability insurance required of design professionals by agencies and the judicial system. Yet an architect who implements the artist idea takes on full liability by producing the drawings that result in fabrication or site design. As cities begin to require this of artists, they venture into unfamiliar legal and insurance ramifications. Copyrights are also dramatically different. Typically, architects and engineers did not have a means to copyright their built product, but had contractual arrangements that protected their rights to the design. Yet, in California, the California Art Preservation Act states that art has to be maintained in the manner in which it was originally conceived and executed by the artist. What does this mean to an artist working in a park? If it results in an obvious art piece, then the definition is clear. However, if total involvement and integration is the desired direction of public art, how does this apply? What if changes are made to the park in the future, is it a work of art that cannot be altered? Art administrators and those wise to the industry are debating this on a regular basis. Legal experts are saying that it may not be to the artist advantage to collaborate to this degree as artists could loose protection. Challenges have not yet been made so the outcome is as of now, undetermined. These unknowns are often uncomfortable for risk managers or city attorneys who are reluctant to issue contracts without these accountabilities resolved.
The expanded role of the artist in the public domain raises a lot of interesting questions, but perhaps the most relevant to planning and design are: How is it that artists have been able to move into the more traditional realm of planning and design? What might we as planners and designers learn from artists to reinvigorate our own professions?
María Luisa de Herrera is currently the Cultural Affairs Administrator for the City of Santa Monica, California. She has been instrumental in incorporating artists and art opportunities in most all city planning and development projects, making the Santa Monica program innovative in the public art realm. Previously, Ms. de Herrera had created the public art programs for both the County and the City of Santa Barbara, California.
Kathleen Garcia is the Director of the San Diego office of Wallace Roberts & Todd, a multidisciplinary landscape architecture, architecture, urban design and environmental planning firm with offices nationwide. Many of her office's current projects involve collaboration with artists and art administrators in the creation of public spaces.
Gail Goldman joined the City of San Diego's Commission for Arts & Culture as Public Art Coordinator. For the last eight years, she has been instrumental in the implementation of the city's Public Art Policy resulting in a visible increase in artist involvement in San Diego. Prior to her move to San Diego, Ms. Goldman was the Director of Art in Public Places for the Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities and a Program Officer in the Design Arts Program for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C.