This is the Time for Action

We have learned that on Monday of this week, staff of the Pasadena Planning and Development Department recommended to the Pasadena City Council that any further consideration of the Kuhn/Oppenheim sculptures at the Convention Center be put on hold until after a so-called "Citywide Public Art Plan" can be developed.

While a debate about future public art policy in Pasadena may be a good idea, the Pasadena Arts Council (PAC) strongly disagrees with the sudden creation and prioritizing of such an action at this time, uinderstanding that its primary effect will be to halt the democratic process presently moving forward regarding the Arts & Culture Commission's selection of Kuhn/Oppenheim sculptures for the Pasadena Center Plaza.

Two things may happen now:

1. The City Council may vote at its meeting this Monday to adopt the staff recommendation that the "Citywide Public Art Plan" usurp any further discussion of Kuhn/Oppenheim. We will have a clue about this when the Council publishes its agenda, by 5:30 on Friday.

2. Depending on what City Council does Monday, the Arts & Culture Commission may finally have its first meeting with the PCOC (Pasadena Center Operating Company, which opposes any sculpture on the plaza) to discuss Kuhn/Oppenheim on Tuesday, April 7.

LOOK FOR EMAILS AND BLOG POSTINGS THIS FRIDAY AND WEEKEND. PAC WILL UPDATE YOU!

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS THE TIME FOR ACTION! The art community must show up in force at one or both of these meetings -- MONDAY and/or TUESDAY -- to let City officials know that THE ARTS HAVE A VOICE IN PASADENA! YOU ARE NEEDED!

STAY TUNED!

Ears to the Wall

Anyone attending last week's Public Art Subcommittee meeting would have noticed the front-row seats reserved for representatives of the Pasadena Center Operating Company. As was noted in the previous post, the meeting had been called for the purpose of having (to quote the agenda) "a Discussion of creating an Amended PCOC Artist Selection Process." But, as we saw, there was no discussion at all.

Last night, 58 days after the City Council mandated that the PCOC sit down in a public forum with the Arts & Culture Commission to discuss options, the PCOC Board met and passed a resolution to create an ad hoc committee to participate in those discussions. Seems unnecessary, as they already had an "expansion committee" in place to work on issues related to the new center...but before the creation of this new committee, Board Chair Tom Seifert remarked that his group had attended the March 18th Public Art Subcommittee meeting simply in order "to listen" to the conversation.

Representatives of the arts community in the audience at this board meeting were stunned to hear Seifert's representation of events. It was, as one arts supporter noted, supposed to have been a discussion, not an invitation to "put their ears to the wall to hear what was being said next door."

Efforts by the Pasadena Arts Council and others are being made to build a bridge between the arts community and the PCOC leadership in the hopes of avoiding the sort of collision that may result if PCOC continues to insist that the Art at Pasadena Center planning document be summarily dismissed -- a document that members of the PCOC Board themselves helped to create.

That Was The Meeting That Wasn't

At least 50 members of the public (including notables Mayor Bogaard and wife Claire Bogaard, former Commissioner Sasha Anawalt, Planning & Development head Richard Bruckner and others) attended last night's Public Art Subcommittee meeting, convened to allow members of the Subcommittee to begin discussing the "amended artist selection process" with the Pasadena Center Operating Company. Interestingly, by the time the meeting rolled around, the folks on the dais had begun calling it a meeting to "create an amended artist selection process," causing some in the audience to wonder whether the distinction was intentional. None of what the Arts & Culture Commission nor the Public Art Subcommittee has been charged with carries a specified outcome, only that the parties concerned consider alternatives and make another round of recommendations back to City Council. Re-recommending the original Kuhn and Oppenheim sculptures as planned is still an option.

And that is what was urged, encouraged, implored and respectfully requested by many audience members who were allowed to make public comments after Cultural Affairs Manager Rochelle Branch's powerpoint overview of the planning to date. Artists, educators, philanthropists, community leaders, curators, businesspeople, even a public art administrator for the City of Los Angeles (and a Pasadena resident) expressed varied points of view -- support for contemporary art, for the public art planning process, for allowing Pasadena to move purposefully into an artful future -- but all exhorted the Subcommittee and by extension the Commission to return to City Council with a sustained endorsement for the Kuhn and Oppenheim pieces.

A minority opinion was expressed by a small handful of heritage adherents, whose position is that the Civic Auditorium is art enough on the plaza and that the proposed artworks would interfere with the sightlines to the Civic, that the contemporary Lightfield and Thinking Caps just "don't fit."

And then the weirdest thing happened. The meeting, or whatever it was, was adjourned. One powerpoint presentation, lots of public comment pro and con, and then -- no meeting. The Subcommittee and City representatives, including Cultural Affairs, were assembled with mikes before them. Representatives from PCOC were in their reserved front-row seats. It looked like a meeting. It sounded like a meeting. It was billed as a meeting. But, no meeting. No discussion, let alone creation, of an amended artist selection process.

Lip service was paid to a future meeting, and a date to return to City Council -- Monday, April 27th, if they can pull it off in time.

Turns out that PCOC didn't get its act together in time to nominate, according to its Bylaws, representatives to sit on a committee charged with working alongside the Public Art Subcommittee on the getting-thornier-by-the-minute public art debacle. Of course, they've had since January 27th, the day after the City Council authorized this Round 2. You'd think they would be eager to get on with this "amended selection process" in the hope that it would net them the result (no art on the plaza) they want. Or maybe they're just stalling.

In any case, it would have been helpful and considerate for the Subcommittee to have explained to the assembled public why the meeting was being adjourned so abruptly. It wasn't their doing, after all, that caused the shut-down. And adding yet another layer of obfuscation just tempts suspicious minds when the appearance of preferential treatment is hard to ignore.

PUBLIC ART CRISIS

PUBLIC MEETING
When: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 5:30 pm
Where: Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St., Conference Room 211

The Pasadena public art situation has reached a crisis point, and the Pasadena Arts Council is calling on arts supporters, engaged citizens, artists of any medium or performance type, cultural and community leaders, and those who support an open democratic process to attend this meeting.

The meeting has been convened to attempt to sort out the problems created by the City Council's rejection of two artworks proposed by the Arts & Culture Commission for the new Civic Center plaza.

Much is at stake. The artworks were developed in response to a clearly (and process-driven) identified need for iconic sculptures in one of our few major public spaces -- an opportunity for Pasadena to make a statement about itself as an "arts city," as a "cultural destination," as the city's own marketeers like to call it. The works were then tossed out by the City Manager and City Council, responding to a last-minute (and very suspicious) switcheroo on the part of the Convention Center operators.

And why? To preserve more red carpet room for glitzy awards ceremonies held at the Civic? Or because some have decided that Pasadena must stay frozen in time, held forever hostage to some past architectural ideal? And when did "heritage" start meaning "interfering with the future"?

If we don't engage with what is going on right now, we will get what we deserve -- a cold, empty Convention Center Plaza, hundreds of thousands of dollars down the rat hole, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create important works of art squandered.

It is imperative that the arts community turn out for this meeting. You don't have to speak, you don't have to identify yourself, but you do have to be there if you believe that arts policy in Pasadena must not -- will not -- be hijacked.

Who's Afraid of the Old and New

So on it goes. At this point, the ball is back in the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission's court, which means it has entered the sub-court of the Public Art Subcommittee, and anyone feeling passionate, or even moderately tepid, about the issue should plan to attend. These subcommittee meetings are open to the public, just like the full Commission meetings, so check back here at Arts Answers for the date and time of the next subcommittee meeting.

While the bureaucrats are rassling and the pundits are pundicizing, over here at the PAC offices we have been considering the "old and new" question in broader terms. We'd like to open the discussion up to the community, and to get the conversation under way, we asked Stephen Nowlin (Director of Art Center's Williamson Gallery and PAC Board President) to give us his take on old and new. Steve has opined in the Comments section of this blog on previous occasions (and at City Council meetings), but we thought his viewpoint would be a great place to start:

"I'm reminded of a visit to the famous postmodern architect Charles Moore's Northern California house at Sea Ranch, in the late 1960's. Modernism had up to then been a series of sequestered moments in history, each one priding itself on having rebelled against, overturned, and made obsolete the hard-fought assumptions that had come before. Thus Impressionism was supplanted by Cubism, Cubism by Constructivism, Constructivism by Surrealism, Surrealism by Abstract Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism by Minimalism. By then, in architecture, Louis Sullivan's "form follows function" and Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" ruled, and the minimal reductive International Style was tantamount to an aesthetic moral imperative. Everyone reveled in the superiority of a sequential time -- and the more present, the more superior.

"So I entered Moore's contemporary, angular, barn-like home expecting to worship in the Religion of Now as a card-carrying young aesthete knew was the godly thing to do. Instead, my religion was shattered. Inside, Moore's house broke all the rules, reinforced no doctrines, confirmed no righteousness -- it was a den of iniquity, a sinful repudiation of everything sleek and au courant. Antique furniture, curious objects of non-western culture, ornate rugs, curios, the old and the new, the high and the low, all melded together in a cacophony of overlapping histories. No precious dogmas reigned, no one history dominated. It was loving embrace of all moments, all pasts, all the good products of human artistic endeavor. In their mingling, each shone with its own dignity and added up to a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

"There is, in honoring the resonance between old and new, a certain liberation from the sense that different generations, styles, and traditions represent insurmountably conflicted values and beliefs. Like differing people in a family or a community or a country, histories exist side-by-side, and their interlocking mosaic is what gives the present its richness and depth.

"In the matter of the Pasadena Center sculptures, some have argued that the contrast between historical architecture and contemporary sculpture is jarring -- that the sculpture and the architecture don't speak the same visual language, and so they can't communicate. Or worse, that the sculpture, by its presence, communicates disparagingly of the historical. There is, some have argued, a preservation issue at stake that cannot withstand the irritation of this new art next to these old buildings. It might be worth pointing out, although it seems somewhat absurd to have to do so, that most of the old buildings at the Pasadena Center are, well, new. They're not historical buildings at all, but rather brand new buildings that try to look historical by echoing some of the superficial characteristics of the actually historic Civic Auditorium. Sort of like Disneyland does on Main Street. The sculptures flank the auditorium far left and right and at the bottom of the steps to its grand entry, much closer to the contemporary faux-historical buildings than to the genuine one. It makes one wonder about the claim of preservation, or rather what is not being preserved -- because if preservation means that everything new, like some Hollywood film set, should confirm to a style frozen in a past moment of time, then there is no opportunity to celebrate a real history layered with multiple times.

"Postmodernism recognized over forty years ago that ending the cold war between the old and new allowed the quarreling realities and stimulating nuances enbedded in true history to inform a deeper and more profound aesthetic. We should not be afraid of the old and the new together, we should welcome it. It will add to all else that is intelligent and extraordinary about our city of Pasadena."

Moving forward, but how?

At the Arts & Culture Commission meeting this past Wednesday night, there was no holding back by many Commissioners, when they expressed their reaction to the City Council's decision to reject its recommendation of the Kuhn and Oppenheim artworks proposed for the Pasadena Center, with anger, frustration, disbelief and dismay served up in hefty portions. Commission Chair Dale Oliver -- expecting City Manager Michael Beck's support and clearly annoyed by the switcheroo recommendation to "consider alternatives" -- called upon Commissioners to consider how they are to move forward.

Particularly baffled by PCOC's position that it did not want anything -- including public artworks -- on the Convention Center plaza was Commissioner Patrick Conyers, who wondered how any alternatives to the Kuhn and Oppenheim pieces could even be considered...if PCOC doesn't want anything in the area of the Convention Center plaza, how does the Commission recommend something...anything...? Quite the conundrum.

Charged by City Council to "consider alternatives," the Commission does not appear to have ruled out the possibility of returning with its original proposal, an option that was acknowledged during the January 26th City Council meeting and referenced by Mayor Bogaard during a conversation with Pasadena Star-News reporter Janette Williams, who quizzed him about the options available to the Commission. Bogaard said that "rethinking the plan and sending it back to the Arts & Culture Commission didn't preclude the present option."

With fewer than 75 days to come up with possible alternatives to the Kuhn and Oppenheim works, the Commission faces some daunting challenges, not the least of which would be mounting a new round of requests for proposals and then evaluating then -- if the City is to keep the whole process fair and truly competitive.

Public Art Subcommittee back at it; meanwhile, the story's getting around

The Public Art Subcommittee of the Arts & Culture Commission-- the group (if two people is a group) responsible for beginning the process of "consideration of alternatives" for the public art proposed at Pasadena Center -- met Wednesday, February 4th, for their second meeting since the controversial City Council decision to reject the recommended artworks.

Subcommittee members Kellye Wallett and Dale Oliver (who also serves as the Chair of the Commission) were joined by Cultural Affairs staff, A&C Commissioners Lyla White and Patrick Conyers and members of the public not willing to let the case close quietly. Absent was representation from Pasadena Center Operating Company (PCOC) and Pasadena Heritage, the two factions against the Kuhn and Oppenheim pieces being placed on the plaza -- against, in fact, any public art being placed on the site.

A number of alternatives arose during the discussion, including temporary artworks, alternative locations for the existing works, the identification of existing artworks as opposed to newly commissioned pieces, and others. It is hard to imagine how temporary or existing works would satisfy PCOC, who made it explicitly clear that they want no artworks of any kind on the plaza. When asked whether the original plan (developed with input from PCOC) for the artworks on the plaza would be relied upon in developing a new selection process, Commissioner Oliver indicated maybe, maybe not, but that it would be hard to ignore the original intent of that plan.

When pressed on the need for participation by the community on the decision, the Subcomittee made clear the distinction between transparency and public input, the former necessary, the latter...not so much.

A goal of a "written articulation" of alternatives by March 1 was set; Cultural Affairs staff has the task of preparing this report.

In the meantime, arts journals in print around the country and online continue to follow the controversy; no less a voice than the New York Times has picked up the story, which was blasted onto the newswire by Sasha Anawalt's resignation from the Commission. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's art and architecture critic, Mary Louise Schumacher, wonders if Pasadena made a mistake "by not involving the public in the process enough, which can lead to polarized, over simplified debates that bring good projects to early ends." (See Links)