Pricey Public Art
Between feasting on bites of taxpayer-funded meals at their dinner meeting tonight, city councilmembers are scheduled to take a virtual stroll on a public art gallery crawl, to include works that were completed this year and others that are on tap for the 2011 proposed public art work plan. Total cost: more than $800,000.
Included in the mix are such can’t-miss masterpieces like $30,000 worth of taxpayer-funded, glitzy light ribbons to circle the $200-million, taxpayer-funded NASCAR Hall of Fame. The dizzy display, like most of the public art plan’s offerings, is built into a city policy that requires a certain percentage of each capital project be dedicated to public art.
That’s why instead of using close to $40,000 for equipment and tools to actually fight crime and protect the public, the money is being used to fund a metallic sculpture that looks like a giant salt-and-pepper shaker set poked full of holes and plopped in front of the Beatties Ford Road Metro Police Station. The piece is entitled “Protect and Lift Up the People.”
Also in the public safety realm, there’s what is described as $50,000 worth of artsy iron gates slated to bejewel Eastland Fire Station #42. Not to be outdone, the new Wilkinson Boulevard gateway to Charlotte-Douglas International Airport reaches for the clouds with various sculptures tagged with a price of $381,000.
Whoever said disco was dead obviously hasn’t had a chance to check out plans for the underpass at West Trade Street and Beatties Ford Road, which dances down the rainbow road with a multi-colored light display that cost $125,000, along with an additional $75,000 from Johnson C. Smith University.
Rounding out the public art plan are the twisting, spastic “Branch Lines” sculptures gracing the Trolley Museum, at a cost of $89,000, and the squat, geometric “Reflections of Community” sculpture perched for a price of $56,000 along Rozzelles Ferry Road at Idaho Drive.
“Reflections in Community” might not be able to compete with the giant, red clay cookie thingamajigs along the South Corridor light-rail line; but art is art, and in Charlotte it costs a bundle.
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