Here’s one for you: What does Red Wing, Minnesota (pop. 13,000), have that Dallas doesn’t? No, no-not snow, or quiet tree-lined streets, or church picnics on Sunday afternoons.
Art. Public art. Lots of it. Ditto such aggressive metropolises as Jop-lin, Lansing, Scottsdale, Grand Rapids-and Fort Worth. While Dallas has been sitting comfortably on her civic hands the past few years, these pocket-sized towns and others have taken advantage of Uncle Sam’s largesse, specifically, $1.7 million in matching grants doled out by the National Endowment for the Arts for the acquisition of major pieces of public art.
The money has been there for the asking. Why Dallas, a wealthy city by any measure, has not seen fit to use this unique opportunity to do something about its poverty-stricken visual environment is not really clear. Or maybe it is. City Hall has “other priorities ” we are told; and the private sector, well, maybe the importance of art in public places has never occurred to its members.
Dallas’ lethargy about public art is in sharp contrast to what’s been accomplished 30 miles west in poor old “uncultured” Fort Worth. Though less than half the size of Dallas, Fort Worth has already acquired three major public sculptures, each representing a sizable financial commitment. Through the active interest and cooperation of Fort Worth’s major museum directors, the city was able to take advantage of the National Endowment largesse in a meaningful and tasteful way.
The striking 40-foot red steel Alexander Calder walk-through “Eagle,” purchased by the Fort Worth National Bank for its new downtown location, reflects a $100,000-plus commitment to public art. It was installed at a busy city corner with the consultation of the local museum directors. Thirteen years earlier, Fort Worth’s First National Bank installed its “Texas Sculpture Entrance Plaza,” a combination of carved pieces, natural s and planting areas by Isamu chi. Only last month George Rickey’s stainless steel kinetic sculpture, “Twelve Triangles Hanging,” acquired by the city with the aid of $35,000 in matching grant funds from the National Endowment, was placed in the nearby Municipal Building.
Dallas’ efforts-a public scale in First National’s lobby, for instance-pale by comparison. In the last four years, five major downtown buildings have been completed, or are under construction, at a cost in excess of $200 million. Less than 1/10 of one per cent of that amount has been spent on art to complement these and other downtown brick and glass projects. This, coupled with the pocket change contributions from “leadership” downtown institutions – First National, Republic, Southland, etc.- makes for an oppressive and tasteless landscape in Dallas, an artless wasteland of concrete, cars and confusion.
Public art, primarily sculpture (though it can also include paintings, murals and monuments) sets a broad standard for art in any city; more people will see and enjoy a city’s public spaces than will visit all its museums and galleries combined. When well done, and integrated into then spatial matrix of a city, it can add an extra dimension of continuing interest and delight for the civic environment. Done poorly, as gratuitous decoration, it can be repetitive and boring, a waste of public space and money, and an insult to the public taste.
Amid the pervasive apathy on the matter of public art, there has been one man who has tried to make a contribution. One man. (Eat your heart out Red Wing, Minnesota.)
Trammell Crow, owner/developer of the Market Center complex on Stemmons Freeway, has been to date the only consistent contributor of art for city spaces. The works he likes, as evidenced by the extensive sculpture garden incorporated into his Stemmons Towers complex, lean toward the pleasant rather than the significant.
A rhino and giraffe by Texas artist David Cargill adorn the Marsalis Park Zoo grounds, courtesy of Crow, and various other sculptures in public places are there because of his generosity. The limitations of his tastes are far less important than the fact that he does spend money on art. If there were other major donors there would be less ot the “one-man’s taste level” at work in the city. Certainly if Crow or any other group of donors gathered a small percentage of the funds he has already spent on art (the purely decorative Bjorn Wiinblad tapestries he commissioned for the Apparel Mart last year reportedly are valued in excess of $100,000), a major public piece could be acquired for Dallas. Remember, the Endowment provides matching funds.
What Dallas lacks is major contemporary sculpture, either an object on a pedestal or a more timely and avant-garde endeavor. By dragging its feet while other cities jumped, Dallas may have already missed its prime opportunity to acquire a “monumental” work of art through the National Endowment.
Within the past seven years, while cities like Des Moines, Kansas City, Seattle, Fort Worth and Grand Rapids have purchased major pieces of sculpture for public spaces, Dallas has ignored the impulse. Now the trend toward “monumental” sculpture-the object on a pedestal – apparently has passed and the National Endowment’s interest has turned more toward “environmental” public art.
Richard Koshalek, assistant director to the visual arts program for the National Endowment, and also newly appointed director of the Fort Worth Art Museum, commented recently: “At the Endowment, we are trying to get away from the traditional approach, from the idea of a single object on a pedestal.” Koshalek says the Endowment is “more interested now in getting artists involved in problem-solving projects; taking a piece of land or a waterway and inventing something that will be a complementary part of the environment.”
Koshalek suggests, as an example, “the excitement that would be created by (light sculptor) Dan Flavin’s working with New York City to create a new subway station environment, or (wood sculptor) Louise Nevelson’s creating a bridge over a waterway in Atlanta.”
As the Endowment’s criteria change, its standards become more demanding and the traditional approach to public art becomes less likely to attract federal funds.
Is Dallas ready for art as part of city life? Given Dallas’ past record of conservatism, it may be difficult enough to sell the City Council and the general populace here on the idea of a single object on a pedestal, much less the more conceptual approach toward environmental art that Koshalek describes.
Dallas’ first application to the National Endowment started through the local bureaucracy seven months ago and has yet to reach Washington. The Dallas Park and Recreation Department Board, the agency with primary authority to initiate requests for art in public places, is reportedly filing for a matching grant to install a major piece of sculpture in downtown Dallas. But Park Board director Dr. William B. Dean, who supports such a project, told me some weeks ago that the application is still bogged down in what he wryly refers to as “bureaucratic procedure.” And Dean candidly admits, “Art objects are low on the priority list for public monies.”
“There is a devastating lack in this area,” Dean goes on. “The question is funding for public places.” The same question obviously applies to private money. And the answer, regrettably, is the same.
Dean’s comments reveal the wide gap that exists between intent, however vague, and action in Dallas in terms of public art. Fact is, the park department, the Chamber of Commerce, elected city officials, the big downtown institutions – none is playing an active enough role in the well-being of Dallas’ visual environment. Cooperation among them, which is essential to any meaningful action, is almost non-existent.
Until Dallas develops a more educated and aggressive approach to public art, the void will remain. At the moment, Dallas’ spaces are what one observer describes as “orphans in terms of public art.” The void extends the breadth of the city. The new City Hall, the Convention Center, in fact the entire downtown Dallas area lacks art as part of its scheme.
Placing a major piece by a nationally-recognized contemporary artist should be a first priority project for Dallas. The city’s request for Endowment funds, which may get out of City Hall by the time this article goes to press, would provide one opportunity if it can meet the Endowment’s current criteria. While location is not specifically noted on the application, Dean’s intention is to put a work of art across the street from the new City Hall and in view of the Convention Center. Some people are talking about a major piece of sculpture in front of the new City Hall, but Dean rejects that idea. “The plaza in front of City Hall will be a work of art in itself,” he says.
Dean refers to “unannounced commitments for major public art funded by the private sector for downtown Dallas.” Whether these commitments would meet the Endowment’s standards for “major art for public places” is academic. The “private sector” represented by downtown interests clearly is capable of funding such a project with or without federal support.
What is not academic, however, is the quality of art which the private sector is willing to support and which the public sector is willing to accept. The example of Fort Worth’s major downtown institutions working in close harmony with the directors of the three museums is a lesson that cannot be ignored. Dallas has access not only to the directors of those same institutions, but also to Harry S. Parker, director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Robert M. Mur-dock, DMFA’s contemporary curator, and William B. Jordan, director of SMU’s Meadows Museum of Spanish Art and the Meadows Sculpture Garden.
Dallas also has sophisticated private collectors familiar with contemporary art and with use of public art in other cities. Such persons should not only be consulted, they should be placed in positions of some authority to raise private and public funds and to commission major contemporary art projects. They could also work closely with the National Endowment’s Visual Arts Committee, through its assistant director Ko-shalek in Fort Worth.
“Now is the most propitious time since the 1930’s for the government to encourage public art,” writes art historian Irving Sandier in a 1973 report to National Endowment chairman Nancy Hanks. The Endowment’s budget for public art has grown from $45,000 in 1967 to a requested $700,000 in 1975. If Dallas is indeed “an orphan in terms of public art,” can it afford to ignore a generous uncle?
