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Public Art
Art everywhere you look
Philadelphia has more public art than any other American city, according to a recent survey of outdoor sculpture sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution. This is not so surprising since Philadelphia’s extraordinary collection of public art is a result of the city’s long and impressive tradition of cultural and civic involvement. With superb examples of every period and material, the city’s unrivaled collection forms a veritable “museum without walls.”
Located throughout the city, public art is there for everyone as an enduring reflection of how we see the world at different points in time. Public art in Philadelphia spans the history of the United States and three centuries of artistic styles and trends.
As the nation’s first capitol, Philadelphia began early to commemorate heroic figures, popular leaders, patriotic ideals and historic events. Public art also served to enhance and enliven an expanding city. The nation’s first fountain built with public funds was created in 1809 by William Rush for Centre Square, now the location of City Hall. When City Hall was built, Rush’s fountain sculpture, Water Nymph and Bittern, was moved to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In Philadelphia, art and architecture are often inseparable, as in City Hall’s staggering array of more than 250 sculptures by Alexander Milne Calder.
There is almost always a fascinating story behind every work of public art in the city. Along Kelly Drive, Cowboy (1908), Frederic Remington’s feisty large-scale bronze, has a special local connection through his model Charlie Trego, a native of Chester County, PA, who was the manager of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
Public art attracts attention and, by its nature, often causes heated debate. J. Otto Schweizer’s noble All Wars Memorial to Colored Soldiers and Sailors (1934) was relegated to an obscure part of Fairmount Park, and, as the result of public outcry, was only in 1990 moved to its originally proposed location on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
Activists from the Philadelphia Art Coalition successfully picketed the Curtis Building when they worried that an exquisite mosaic mural, The Dream Garden (1916) by Maxfield Parrish and Louis Comfort Tiffany, would be sold and removed from the lobby for which it was created.
Half of the city stewed while the other half chuckled as the statue of Rocky was moved from its temporary cinematic perch at the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps to its permanent home at the Wachovia Spectrum sports arena in South Philadelphia.
Public artworks in Philadelphia have been initiated by a wide range of organizations, individuals and agencies with different missions, including the Fairmount Park Art Association, the City of Philadelphia, the Redevelopment Authority, state and federal agencies, universities, museums, developers, corporations, civic groups, private donors and artists.
The Fairmount Park Art Association became the nation’s first private, non-profit public art and planning organization when it was chartered in 1872. Its initial purpose was to enhance the park environment with sculpture. However, by the turn of the century its concerns expanded to locations throughout the city. Masterworks by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French, Alexander Milne Calder, Alexander Sterling Calder, Frederic Remington, Jacques Lipchitz and Henry Moore are among the best known and admired works acquired by the Art Association for the city. The Art Association continues this tradition with commissions by important contemporary artists including Isamu Noguchi, Siah Armajani, Jody Pinto, Martin Puryear and Pepón Osorio.
Philadelphia set the stage for a profusion of municipal public art programs that have cropped up throughout the United States in recent years. In 1959, the city’s Redevelopment Authority established an unprecedented program that requires private developers to allocate one percent of their construction costs for fine arts. Claes Oldenburg’s jaunty Clothespin for Centre Square was an early result of the program. Later that same year, City Council passed the trailblazing “percent for art” ordinance, mandating that a percentage of construction costs for City projects be set aside for fine arts. Public art has been commissioned for city plazas and buildings, recreation centers, the Criminal Justice Center, the Convention Center and the Philadelphia International Airport.
The intrinsic value of Philadelphia’s magnificent public art collection has been underscored in recent years through an ambitious outdoor sculpture conservation effort spearheaded by the Art Association and taken up by the city’s Public Art Office. A sculpture lighting program is also underway. Take a nighttime excursion by car along Kelly Drive to see the sculptures aglow, including Joan of Arc and Abraham Lincoln, and keep your eye on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which will soon be lighted from 16th Street to the Museum of Art. For more information about public art in Philadelphia, please visit the Fairmount Park Art Association at www.fpaa.org. For more information about the sculpture-lighting effort along Benjamin Franklin Parkway, visit www.centercityphila.org.
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