Forget the bronze statues of prominent historical figures. Forget the boring plaques.
Eugene citizens want something different — and thanks to a grant received by the City of Eugene, they have a consultant who may help locals get what they want.
“We’ve done enough with commemorative bronze sculptures,” said city Visual Arts Coordinator Isaac Marquez, referring to sculptures such as the well-known statue of Eugene Skinner at the downtown Eugene Library and the Rosa Parks statue, erected a year ago, that sits just across the street.
“People want new, exciting art — something that’s different than a bronze sculpture of a historical figure,” he said.
Reception of the Parks figure, posed sitting on a bench at the downtown Lane Transit District station’s entrance, has been lukewarm, while more modern and interactive art, such as the downtown library and the art inside it, has gotten a more enthusiastic response from locals. Because public reaction to Eugene’s downtown art has historically been a bit hit-and-miss, the city used a grant it received from the National Endowment for the Arts in March last year to hire a consultant to help them better define their artistic identity.
Marquez said the city hired Clark Worth of the consulting firm Barney & Worth “to create a little bit more of a strategic approach through what the residents want public art to be in Eugene and through a comparison of what other cities the size of Eugene have in terms of art.”
Worth found that every other U.S. city he examined, including Charlotte, N.C., and Huntsville, Ala., boasted more employees working in their city’s public art programs, which were generally older and better established. He also found that community members seemed very engaged in the city’s public art plans and wanted to see a bigger picture at play.
“Eugene has accumulated a sizeable public art collection, but observers say it doesn’t yet add up,” Worth said. “There is some concern that the public art collection, to date, lacks a unifying vision and distinctive character.”
In the report, Worth said two-thirds of the hundreds of survey respondents wanted to see public art both downtown and in local neighborhoods. The majority of respondents preferred to see art in and around public buildings, parks and institutions such as the University, as well as on city streets and sidewalks.
Respondents also expressed a desire for art to be more integrated into landscape or building design.
Marquez said after seeing the results of the survey, the city now wants to incorporate art into other non-art city projects, “like street or transport projects or new buildings,” so that city art seems more fluid with its surroundings.
“If you look around Broadway Plaza, there’s art everywhere,” Marquez said. “We’re not going to put plazas in, but we’re going to incorporate our art in streets.”
Some of the recommendations Worth gave the city are impossible to implement immediately because of Eugene’s budget constraints. Marquez said Worth recommended that “we restructure how the program was funded,” but “we have incredible budget deficit in the city.”
Instead, Marquez said, “We’re going to use what we have and do our best with it.”
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