oaklandia

Remember Them (Ordinances)

I've been watching this the way one watches hornets build a nest right over the kitchen door.

Mario Chiodo was unsuccessful with this design in the public art competition for Mandela Gateway, but the work resonated with some folks, such as Jerry Brown and Ignacio de la Fuente and Peggy Stinnett and Respectalians from the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, who Mario got to pose in a really cool, situationist way... I think. Add the City's Parks and Rec Commission and the City Planning Commission to the group of supporters.

Getting on board with the work has been easy for politicians: it's an encylopedic reference to civil rights leaders and humanitarians, from Nelson Mandela to Mother Theresa to Thich Nhat Hanh.

The problem is that no arts-focused body convened by the City has ever approved of the 52 foot by 21 foot bronze sculpture. For well over a year a stand-off has brewed between City officials, who know enough about art to know it when they see it, and the cultural advisors it has appointed and hired to oversee such matters: the Public Art Advisory Committee, the Cultural Affairs Commission, the staff of the Public Art Program at the City's Cultural Arts and Marketing Division, and the newly-formed Gifts Panel.

Meanwhile, Chiodo and supporters of the Monument worked with the Chamber of Commerce to move the project into a private commission of Forest City, the developer at the core of the City's Uptown Development Area. They have been successful in siting the sculpture in Fox Square Neighborhood Park, which is currently private property... until Forest City gives the park to the City in 2008, and with it the Monument.

Observing this, the Public Art Advisory Committee sent a letter to the Mayor and Council alerting them to an end run around the City's Public Art Program. The letter argued for a formal review of Monument which would eventually become part of the City's art collection by a simple act of deeding the property it which it stands on to the City. The Cultural Affairs Commission endorsed the letter, and City staff met with the artist and project backers, who agreed to the review by the City's Gift Panel.

The panel met on May 31 to review the proposal, look at site plans and imagery, and visit Chiodo's studio to engage the artist in a discussion where they encountered a posse of project backers, including poet and novelist Guy Johnson. At the end of the day, Monument looks like it's getting another no vote --albeit a qualified one-- from this latest public body.

The report contains some aesthetic recommendations for the work, which are typical with large civic commissions, but centers its declination based on, what else, the numbers. The unfunded portion of the fabrication cost (estimated at $3.5 million) and the ongoing cost of maintaining the safety and condition of a two-story, 50 foot piece of bronze, which the proposal suggests would be covered by sales of an educational DVD.

The report will go to the Public Art Advisory Committee on Monday at 5pm, and insiders aren't betting that the recommendation will be contested in any way. It should shoot straight to the Cultural Affairs Commission on June 26.

The Thing That Must Be Discovered

What's at the heart of this debate?

• Aesthetic differences: the highly representational style of the Monument is in stark contrast to say, The Ladders at  14th Street and Mandela Parkway commemorating the Loma Prieta collapse of the Cypress freeway. Those who align with one style or the other have been known to include a moral superiority while they're at it.
• Political correctness: voting down a sculpture that is attempting to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, among others, is going to require a lot of prelim regardless of the rationality of your argument. Yet this particular work has received plenty of no votes without anyone calling the card... yet.
• Frustration with City bureaucracy: Public review of art and culture is a time-consuming system erected to protect public interest, with very little attention paid to it until one is not favored by it. Chiodo's alternative to public funding of the Monument is an important model, even though this particular example seems to be pointing to public funding after all.
• Contempt for the Contempters: The Monument assaults our sense of fair play, but it should not be the only project to do so. It is merely another example of the Brown Administration appearing to support the arts while holding its own cultural workers and advisors in small regard. With one of the largest concentrations of artists in its borders and at its side, City Hall continues to relegate our functions to titulary rubber stampers while maintining a capricious royal court of aesthetic favorites who will likely triumph regardless of our protests or endorsements. As a participant in the recent Ron Dellums Arts Town Hall pointed out: City Hall has selected artists and arts initiatives based on their sympathy, or susceptibility, to the idea of the arts in service to the Mayor's economic agenda. Upon reflection this agenda has created as much loss for citizens as it has created opportunity for its investors. The impact on the arts, barring the good fortunes of some of us, is writ large in our own deep-seated divisions.

You all have to, no I'm serious this time, fill out a speaker card for this one.

Oh yeah: all artists need to vote on Tuesday, June 6.

You're All Fired, Including Me

The City Clerk published a document listing all the members of Oakland's boards and commissions with notes about the duration of their terms. I reviewed the Cultural Arts Commission page and am delighted to announce:

Many of us can go home now.

We'll do so because we've been assigned to terms that began before we arrived, and end (or ended) soon thereafter. Others are enjoying their terms beyond the legal limit of two consecutive three-year runs. This was, as a City Hall Gadfly alleges, because of two things:

1. Early on in its administration (about the time we began celebrating the arts) the Mayor's Office was keenly interested in politically emasculating one or two commissions, and so set the City Clerk on revising the approach to all of them to obscure the emasculating activity. Instead of appointing someone and having them live a three-year term from the moment of appointment, the appointments were fixed. You entered them like you would a photo booth. If you were there for all four flashes, eggselent. It could happen that you were there for only the last flash.
2. The City Clerk's office dutifully realigned, something that took them a kerjillion years because it involved the big things like time and space. Then they kept the rosters on a floppy disk that was infected with a boot virus, so all the work was foobared. In order to restore the data it has been suggested that it was simply... made up. I like this idea. Floppies are so nineteen eighty sixteen. It has a "And I realized I had stepped on a butterfly" feeling to it. Just add Kafka.

I think we should also step down because we've been a collective sack of potatoes, unclear on our mission and might, captivated by responsbilities outside the scope of public service, and engaged in either self-serving or self-loathing behavior. It's not all disconnect. A large cross-section of the commission has a point of commonality: an ability to drink at the same bars as the Mayor's staff, something we institutionalized on our agenda for a time.

We Were Floored, Now It's Been Tabled

Assembly Member Mark Leno yanked AB 655 which proposed a 1% surcharge on admissions to entertainment venues as an alternate source of funding for the California Arts Commission. Plow your way through the routine howling this produced in movie theatre and amusement park owners to find the strange silence from the arts community on this one. The bill included taxing nonprofits themselves: 1% of the door, tithed to the CAC on the off-chance we might get it back through our participation in a re-capitalized CAC, which would be, thanks to us in small measure, and cineplexes and six flags in larger measure, back in the bidness of cultural funding.

• Theatre Bay Area published a March discussion with the author.
• This is the text of the languishing bill.
• The committee analysis of the bill, which lists the Oakland City Council as a supporter. Who was that? Nancy Nadel!
  THE ITEM | THE REPORT | DID YOU GET THE MEMO?
• And my favorite moment on this subject came, as usual, from a right-wing religious political action, er, sorry, educational nonprofit California Family Council who categorized it as a "Just Plain Silly Bill". They characterize the bill as taxing children who who want only to go see Bambi or Nemo.

One can always count on the religious right for modest proposals.