May 11, 2006
When Public Art Goes Wrong
You asked us what the hell it was, but maybe the better question is: what the hell were they thinking? I took a stroll over to the old convention center site yesterday to see the new Art Walk, installed by the DC Arts Commission and hailed by Mayor Anthony Williams as "an example of how art can transform the mundane into an exciting aesthetic experience." It transforms something alright, but not the parking lot as much as our view on who should be allowed to design public art in this town.
In fact, maybe we should go over a few basic rules:
1. Don't Make It Look Like A Bus Depot. Unless it's actually going to be a bus depot. Each of the six pairs of backstops (think your childhood baseball field) share a stretched tarp on top, keeping shade for the benches lining the walk below. The sterile silver poles and white benches, combined with its placement in the center of the parking lot, make it feel like WMATA is going to come barreling down the walkway any second. Apparently this is a real danger, since a row of unsightly — but likely permanent for the duration of the Walk's existence — orange pylons block the ramped entrance where 8th Street deadends.
2. Glitter: Leave It To Mariah Carey. The walkway and a number of strips throughout the parking lot are covered in multicolored tumbled glass, making it look as if a raging tailgate party was overcome by giant buckets of paste, leaving thousands of broken beer bottles glued to the pavement in their wake. And honestly, mosaicked drainage gutters? Really?
3. Astroturf. Neon green plastic grass? No. Just...no.
4. For The Love Of All That Is Holy, Label The Artwork. If this is supposed to be an "exhibition of twelve works by local artists," why no recognition? A search up and down the walkway, around the poles, and to the corner of each lot revealed no place that displayed the artist's names and titles of the pieces.
5. Pick Better Art. Aside from the hideous installation itself, most of the art work ranges, with few exceptions, from "eh" to downright cringeworthy. (Disclaimer: Since the contact person in the Mayor's communication office didn't know what "art" I was talking about, I had to play match-up between the press release list and the artworks; corrections are appreciated.)
The "eh": Leslie A. Cohen's Metamorphis of Sky. In this series of color photos, Cohen tracked jet plumes stretched out along the sky. The idea is interesting, documenting the path of objects by the trails they've left behind, but the execution is somewhat poor — forty photos is simply too many — and the implication vis-à-vis the theme (metamorphosis, if you couldn't tell) is off-putting. Jet plumes lose their shape and slowly disappear, until you forget the jet was ever in the sky. Those aren't the kinds of changes we should look forward to in this city.
The Cringeworthy: Gary Medovich's Emos. This particular piece features emoticons. Seriously. Like, colons and parenthesis and...oh, it's too painful to go on. Adjoa J. Burrowes' reproduction of her children's book illustration Caterpillar would be cute, if it weren't for the foot-high, paragraph-long copyright disclaimer (and slick advertisement space for her publisher) in the middle of it.
The Exceptions: Jati Lindsay's A Study in Rhythm. A series of three black and white photographs captures a drummer and dancer, captivated by their own movement. Lindsay's photos are breathtaking and, unlike most of the pieces, represent some of the city's culture. Joey P. Manlapaz, who has painted our local street scenes for decades, contributes a quaintly appropriate piece in DC Skyline.
Though one can applaud the city's decision to brighten up an otherwise drab parking lot during its, you know, metamorphosis into a new building, there must be a less tacky way to display public art. Or what's next? Shall we gather some local artists to decoupage the Verizon Center with corporate logos? Maybe make a papier mâchè recreation of the Capitol to represent the decomposing nature of democracy? Almost seems like we should just stick with murals.
See more photos here.
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Alright Jati!!
meh. it's not that bad. could be better. could be worse. looks a little out of place... but...
oh i liked the blues glass stripes. but i'm gay. and you know how they gays go for anything sparkly....rhinestones, drag queens, jeans that have been 'be-dazzled', it's a whole adventure
Agreed on all the aesthetics mentioned here; this is public art gone terribly wrong. But my biggest problem is how permanent the whole thing looks (mosaicked gutters included). Isn't the old convention center site supposed to be redeveloped as something exciting, new, and useable, unlike a 3-4 acre parking lot in the middle of the city? I know that somebody's "working on it", but an empty lot (perhaps with remnants of the old convention center still smoldering) is always a great impetus to get a project moving. I fear we're now stuck with the lot and this awful art show for the next decade.
I don't think you have to be a whacked out conspiracy theorist to realize that it would be awefully easy in the event of an emergency for people to drive up 10th street through that 'art walk.' I know it doesn't have the same ring as 'freedom tunnel' or 'nuclear holocaust survival path,' but considering the real estate value of that patch, doesn't it seem odd that they would use the rest of it for a single level parking lot?
Jason - In poking around for information, I came across this site, which says construction is anticipated to begin January 2008. Of course, that likely means July 2008, then Dec 2008...you know. But at least they have tentative plans. I should also mention that the contact person in the Mayor's office told me the cost of the Walk is more than compensated for by the parking fees, so I suppose no one will be beholden to it for the taxpayers sake.
Ryan - "be-dazzled"...why didn't I think of that??
I sort of like it, if just because the big open space it's in breaks up the monotony of the surrounding blocks and some of those buildings facing it are pretty neat. It'd be a nice place for a park.
I agree.
Damn. It was bad enough to leave me speechless.
TC
it's freakin ugly.
I kinda like it - in a temporary sort of way. (And really, the issue of waht to build on the site has been kicking around for so long how can anyone not have heard about it?) The glittery glass drains are sort of funny (and you know they must be using recycled glass..) and I like the plantings they lead to on H Street - it looks like they are creating sort of a wetland area for the storm water to sit in, complete with water tolerant plants, rather than just flushing it into the river.
I like the 10th Street (not 8th Street as the original poster indicated) walkway where the art is - I appreciate that they are marking the re-opening, at least visually, of the street after years of being blocked off by the awful old convention center, and I like the change in elevation in an otherwise flat site. I definitely like the artificial turf. Yes I do. As for the structures the art is on - I appreciate the shade, at least. The art itself in okay - not particularly moving to me but whatever. However when I saw that the whole series was being being wrapped in the "Metamorphosis" blanket, I though "uh oh, here we go - some fairly innocuous public art being weighed down under a 'unifying theme' that is much too heavy for the art to support."
But - I think the designers (do we know who? Martha Schwartz would be my guess, or someone who has learned from her?) have down a great job, in a attempt to do some interesting things with a space that would otherwise be grim, for a few years until the buldozers come in. (I couldn't disagree more with the previous poster longing for a empty lot.)
They should reopen 10th street through the parking lot.
Rarely does DC get public art right. Often its either just a boring man on a horse statute, an overdone abstraction like the FDR memorial or something dumb like the panda statutes.
The donkey and elephants were brilliant though.
www.dcbubble.blogspot.com
the astroturf is pretty awful. but, admittedly, i love the recycled glass tiles.
I work a couple blocks away & I don't think it's bad at all. Better that than just a huge parking lot of asphalt with nothing to break it up.
I LIKE the glitter, and I'm hetero...
One quibble about the lot & I'm not sure if it's still the case now, but it happened several weeks ago to me BEFORE the art walkway was completed. I cut thru the parking lot at the end of my lunch to get to my bldg. I didn't want to walk 2 blocks just to get to the other sidewalk. A security car pulls up & the guy asks if I have a car parked there. I said no & he said I had to get out of the lot, that it was only open for people who parked there. RIDICULOUS. I retorted that there were no signs saying this, and no fences keeping pedestrians from cutting thru the lot. So I said "Allright already, I'm leaving" - and I continued cutting thru the lot to leave!!
Anybody else encounter that??
Looloo- that's crazy! I work close by and will cut through to see what they say. BTW, I see people cutting through ALL THE TIME and no security cars approaching them.
I have to say that while I have mixed feelings about the art itself (I agree with some of the critiques and, yes, the artists should be mentioned!), I think the design of the Art Walk and parking lot are refreshing and kind of exciting. Especially when one thinks about what was there before and how it could have been simply a big empty void, rather than attempt to create some sort of a place, while we try to agree on what eventually should be built on the site.
The design is funky and wild and a bit over the top, but I think that's the point and, frankly, this city needs a little jolt of color and life and something different downtown. The astroturf takes a little getting used to, but makes sense when you think about it -- it requires minimal maintenance, it won't get muddy and destroyed after bad weather, and it will be a lot cooler and appealing in August than parched grass or concrete.
Another thing I like is that we now have an appealing pedestrian cut-through where there was once a forebidding wall blocking off downtown. And it's a whole lot more interesting (and safer--note all the lighting at night) than cutting through a regular old parking lot.
I share the author's concerns that public art is too often generic and sanitized and doesn't really say anything. Let's use this as an opportunity to discuss what good public art should be and try to use the space for this purpose in the future. And be happy it's not just a big stretch of blacktop in the middle of downtown -- we have the suburbs for that.
Boy oh boy, these dcist'ers love to prove the value of their liberal arts degrees and rip to shreds anything nice the city tries to do, eh? Anybody consider that the most logical alternative would have been to leave a empty mud puddle in the middle of the city instead?
Fact is, at least DC is trying with this. The installation is so non-traditional for this straight-laced city, I think it should be celebrated just for that!
Shimmery glass shards? Crazy compared to the sh*t-load of boring monuments in town. Astroturf? As an alternative to the miles of wasteland parks in DC, it's like Picasso's cubism to the Park Service's lame attempt at impressionism.
It may not be the greatest, but the Metamorphoses installation is certainly better than some traditional photo collage of the historical buildings that stood on the site over the years. I suspect that was probably the first idea, and would probably have been sponsored by CVS.
If Ms. Goss is such an art genius, then why not give us all of her wonderful ideas for a temporary, low-cost installation on a very strangely shaped space?
I kinda like it too... it's certainly very new and refreshing ---
Sorry but no, Artie, a half-assed job is not better than nothing. DC has plenty of creative artists. They have plenty of creative designers. There is no excuse for not having an artpark that is more than just mediocre.
High standards? Yes, most assuredly. But when you have a city that seems bound and determined to live down to the least expectation, you'd better make sure that least expectation is set pretty high.
FYI: I got this in a realestate email this morning
DC Lays Out Billion-Dollar Plan for Old Convention Center Site
It took five years of planning and much wringing of hands, but DC officials and developers have finally delivered a master plan for the 10.2 acres of prime real estate where the old Washington Convention Center once stood. This major parcel (bounded by 11th Street to the west, New York Avenue to the north, 9th Street to the east, and H Street to the south) will soon be home to nine buildings, containing almost 400,000 square feet of office space, 770 apartments and condominiums, and about 300,000 square feet of retail. In addition, developers envision a $180 million library, and hope to reopen long-closed 10th and I Streets. Two green plazas are also being considered for this land, for hosting concerts and events. Ground is expected to be broken in 2008, with project completion slated for 2011.