More opposition to Art Stop (Letter to editor)

GF Bird on Fri, 6th Jul 2012 6:29 pm 



Thanks, Patty.

Today, the CC approved agenda item 1 for Public Works after 2 (or three?) council members announced their opposition. Naturally, I sent the following to try to stop this private project meeting in secret, calling their secretly-arrived-at selection “public art”:

From: Gregory Francis Bird (Greg) 2230 South Woodward Street Milwaukee Wisconsin 53207 1316 414 481 7541

To: Honorable City of Milwaukee Common Council Members

July 5, 2012
Re: File #110946, July 6, 2012 meeting, Public Works Committee agenda item 1 – David John Dombrowski bequest

(As disclosure, I’ve lived since 1984 three blocks east of the KK/Howell/Lincoln traffic island, and have submitted to international design competitions before submitting to my neighborhood competition.)
As the City of Milwaukee Common Council considers the BayViewArtStop funding proposal to use 50 percent of the David John Dombrowski bequest, file number 110946 (Public Works Committee agenda item 1), please accept my suggestion that no funding be currently approved until a proper selection procedure respectful of the public has run its course.
The problems with the BayViewArtStop selection procedure began at the start. In the run-up to the spring elections, two incumbents making known their long-standing involvement with the relevant business improvement district, BID #44 (along KK, Becher to Morgan), found the topic of putting something in the subject traffic island brought up again.
Since the traffic island had a famous establishment (Triangle Tap) during trolley days, the idea of putting a structure on the traffic island was not new. But, much as the leadership, and other members, of the BID “seized” the initiative, the BID didn’t recognize that the traffic island is public, both in ownership, and, more importantly, public in the public’s mind and experience. That public includes neighbors of lifetimes and generations who join customers from around the region at this most important of Milwaukee’s ancient crossroads. They are among customers helping to drive business success. They are at least equal, if not more, significant than the members of the surrounding BID (some not having their residences in the neighborhood, and who could well sell their businesses because of their location on a popular old-style urban intersection with a foundation of near-by loyal customers). Instead of being in on the selection procedure at the front end, the neighboring public is now subjected to another sorry routine of a self-selected selection committee holding not-open-to-the-public BID committee or sub-committee meetings, eliminating from public viewing the submissions that for whatever secret reason were chosen not to be presented for public consideration, with the self-selected selection committee’s three “finalists” presented for one (ONE!) neighborhood public meeting, resulting in another tired mimic of fifty-year-old “modernism” that doesn’t fulfill terms of the RFP except for the usual disclaimer saying the selection committee “. . . reserves the right to modify this solicitation . . . in the best interest of the project.”
No. Instead of recognizing the primacy of the public for this most prominent of Milwaukee public sites, and including the public on the front-end, soliciting suggestions and seeking consensus on how to structure the selection procedure to minimize selection concerns up front, BID #44 kept it private, engendering a plague of suspicions about self-selected selection committee artistic “taste” leaders (affiliated with UWM’s “modernist”-leaning School of ARchitecture and Urban Planning) winding up just happening to select the finalist who went to UWM SARUP whose submission parrots SARUP’s “modernist” school leanings.
When the RFP, which includes inaccurate language such as, “Its industrial importance was established when the first train depot in the area opened in 1855 followed by the first steel mill, Milwaukee Iron Co. which opened in 1868”, omits water-based industries just down the ridge along the KK estuary like Edward Phelps Allis’ and partners’ Empire Leather (mid-1840s) and its successors, Minerva Furnace, The Cream City Iron Works (1856, later Filer and Stowell), the Chase (Dr. Enoch and Horace) Glass and Brick works, Vilter, and associated lumber yards, coal yards, etc., our neighborhood is unlikely to be fairly served. “New industry”, referring to Eber Brock Ward’s Milwaukee Iron Company, came after more than a decade of industry along the navigable KK estuary. North of Lincoln Avenue, in the City of Milwaukee from the mid-1850s (and never in the historic Village of Bay View), the triangle island sits a mile inland from “along the shores of Lake Michigan”, where the Milwaukee Iron Company located with its surrounding company town. The 1855 train depot was at the bend in Bay Street, awaiting the building of a causeway and trestle across KK Bay.
The triangle island site is, in fact, an ancient crossroads of trails, one leading southeast connecting Lake tributaries (now KK Ave), and one a more direct route south crossing tributaries at upstream fords (Howell Avenue), both funneling north to a short safe crossing of the KK estuary allowing foot and animal access north, or use of water transport inside away from the Lakes storms. Mid-1840s documents refer to burial grounds being at the crossroads northeast quadrant, and a decade later, deeds delineated the burying ground there. Owing to the prominent location, honoring the dearly departed around the triangle island crossing likely extends into time before land-sales.
Missing so much of the triangle island’s history, later in the RFP, “monumental sculpture” is used, followed by “acting as an iconic landmark representing the unique character of the neighborhood”, “engage the community”, “entry/arrival point to the district”, and, “100 percent renewable energy sources, in terms of solar and wind (and even people) should be incorporated into lighting and kinetic strategies”.
The tired “modernistic”, or, “post-modernistic” (or what ever label some feel it needs) finalist hardly matches Washington Park’s Sherman Avenue von Steuben traffic island or countless other truly monumental sculptures in traffic islands around the world that attract tourists, often with water features even in less water-endowed lands.
The “style” of the finalist, being widely disseminated for over fifty years, is indeed “iconic” – an often-seen and much replicated image. That doesn’t work with “unique character of the neighborhood”, which includes game and hunter trails from pre-development times, ancient burying grounds, and prototype industrial efforts.
And, ask yourselves, during the fifty years or so of “modernism” in art, has it served to “engage the community”? Or, have our communities become less engaged? Does the term “alienation” come to mind about disconnected “modernism”?
“Entry/Arrival” at the crossroads? When one crosses the bridges into the Third Ward, entry/arrival signs are properly placed. The triangle site is well-removed from the north portal at Becher (or the KK River bridge?) or out at the city line in the country suburbs at Morgan Ave. Overselling too often results in incongruous results.
“100 percent renewable energy”? It was thoughtful (to avoid the issue of not having any solar or wind on past iterations of the finalist’s design?) announcing recently the addition of solar photovoltaic panels. Not wanting to design the finalist’s submission, I await the technical specifications to see if the obvious has been recognized.
One may get the sense that Bay View, and Milwaukee, is being sold short yet again.
Worse, though, than the RFP omissions and confusions are the insidious conflicts and appearances of inside dealing that the self-selected selection committee’s selection procedure allows. Instead of utilizing procedures long used in international design competitions where submitters request submission information at which time a non-judge attorney supervises the anonymous-to-the-judges assignment of a random number the submitter is to use exclusively on submission, the self-selected selection committee, too-often acting in secret, knew the names of all submitters (including some, like me, who have attended public meetings about neighborhood developments conducted by elected officials for years, making avoidance of any appearance of favoritism (or punitive elimination) easy by claiming conflict, or some who may have been (disclosed or not disclosed) colleagues of judges at school.
As to the funding of this flawed project, I wonder if Mr. Dombrowski would want his legacy to go to a public artwork selected by a self-selected selection committee of a Business Improvement District made up of private business owners (many not with homes in neighborhood) meeting in secret, not even letting the public see all the submissions?
Please, your unit of government should endeavor to establish procedures that are fair, and that appear to be fair, as models for selecting public art that include submissions being anonymous to judges, all submissions reviewed by public, and a public meeting on the front-end and public meetings throughout the selection procedure. Please have such a fair selection procedure apply to this agenda item.

Thank you for your attentions, and best regards – Gregory Francis Bird

Jill Conway on Mon, 9th Jul 2012 9:49 pm 



Actually, I think it will make a lovely spot for the myriad of drunken, drugged-up panhandlers that like to congregate there.

Comment on this Bay View Compass item.