Liesel Fenner

A ‘lucky 13’ total number of public art blog posts were published this week from public art administrators, artists, designers, educators, and students.

Thank you to everyone in the Public Art Network (PAN) community for contributing and sharing the posts with your networks. Let us know your thoughts on the Blog Salon (you can view all 13 posts with this link) and future public art topics that you would like to see discussed through blog posts, webinars, and other information resources.

A cogent comment by Barbara Goldstein asked “does it work?” and emphatically stated, “It would be virtually impossible to measure whether one work of art has an economic impact in a specific place.” When public art administrators are asked for public art economic impact studies from elected officials, city commissions, and constituents it is incumbent on the public art program to look more deeply at how the artworks work within the larger urban and cultural context.

As Goldstein proposed, “questions that can be asked are more subtle—what makes a specific place memorable? Can you describe what you experience there and how it makes you feel? What do you think when you see a particular artwork? Does it improve your experience of this place?”

Studies are tackling the challenging approach of how to cull one’s personal experience of place, as Penny Balkin Bach introduced us to The Knight Foundation and Gallup Corporation’s Soul of the Community study that states, “community attachment creates an emotional connection to place.” The study determined that the key drivers of attachment are social offerings, openness, and the aesthetics of place—all attributes of public art.

Aesthetics! Always a delicate topic to venture into at all stages of public art commissioning, however, Virgina Tech student of Exploring Evaluation for Public Art Alison Spain posed: “how can we expect the public to evaluate an artwork without a basic understanding of design language? If we know that an informed user is a more enthusiastic user, how might better art literacy change the perception of, and ultimately support public art and public art funding? How might we incorporate literacy into all stages of the public art process, beyond a small plaque that is often overlooked?” Plaques can’t provide this information, nor does it detail what went into the creation of the art work.

Rebecca Rothman of the Phoenix Public Art Program cites their thorough tracking of everyone who works on a project. “These people equal JOBS…from fabricators to material suppliers…we’ve asked artists and design leads to list each subcontractor they hire…then we ask the contractor to do the same.”

Brandi Reddick reminded us that “art is an investment.” The Miami-Dade program has commissioned some of the most significant contemporary artists in the world to create one of a kind, site-specific works of art…these works only reflect a percentage of their current value.”

Public art programs are often the catalyst to launch an emerging artist art career through the commissioning of their first work in public space. Supporting the next generation is greatest benefit we as public art professionals can do to advance the field.

PAN will continue to share information approaches to evaluation as it becomes available (Americans for the Arts members, make sure to stay tuned to the PAN listserv for that info and much more).

Also, consider joining us in-person at the PAN Preconference prior to the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in San Antonio, June 7-8 as advance registration is open until next, Wednesday, May 23! (After that, you can still join us, but must register on-site!)

Randy Cohen

This post is one in a series highlighting the Local Arts Index (LAI) by Americans for the Arts. The LAI provides a set of measures to help understand the breadth, depth, and character of the cultural life of a community. It provides county-level data about arts participation, funding, fiscal health, competitiveness, and more. Check out your county and compare it to any of the nation’s 3,143 counties at ArtsIndexUSA.org.

Today we release Local Arts Index indicators #7 and #8 (out of 50).

Solo artists are the spark!

Independent artists are one of the most vivid pieces of evidence that the arts are thriving in a place. Solo artists, regardless of artistic medium or discipline, are very often both the fuel and the spark of a local arts scene. Many artists are also entrepreneurs, launching their work into the world through their own studios, performance spaces, and readings. Overall, we think of the presence of solo artists as a marker of the capacity of a community to deliver the arts.

The Census Bureau provides data on the number of “non-employer” businesses (a business with only a proprietor and no staff) for many industries, including some arts ones. This indicator measures the number of solo artists per 100,000 residents of a county.

Nationally, there were 678,000 of these “artist entrepreneurs” in 2009. While this is almost certainly an “undercount,” it is an interesting measure that can be tracked at a county level over time, so we include it in our national and local arts indexes.

In the typical county, 148 solo artist businesses can be found. 

Share of your county’s employees that work for an arts business

This indicator measures the number of Creative Industries employees in each county per 100,000 residents.

High per capita numbers mean there are more employment opportunities available, while comparatively low per capita numbers suggest comparatively fewer.

The Creative Industries (nonprofit and for-profit businesses involved in the creation or distribution of the arts) are based on data obtained annually from Dun & Bradstreet, one of the most comprehensive and trusted sources for business information in the U.S.

Nationally, the average is about 1.18 percent, and the median is 0.98 percent. The fact that these numbers are smaller than the corresponding arts share of all businesses implies that arts and culture businesses are smaller than other kinds of businesses.

The arts and corporate communities have an interesting, long-standing relationship—especially here in Hartford. In fact, the Greater Hartford Arts Council owes its very existence to the corporate community.

Back in 1971, businesses got together and encouraged the creation of one fundraising and grantmaking entity to support the arts and cultural organizations in Hartford that were growing at an astonishing pace—and, understandably, had increased their need for donations and institutional support. Since then, a somewhat amusing relationship has formed between the arts and business: companies like strong arts organizations—they attract workers, give the neighborhood a rich, vibrant flavor and provide opportunities for positive stewardship.

The arts, too, rely on business for more than just philanthropy: the wealth of resources in the corporate world, from providing pro bono services and building connections with local leaders and everyday employees, businesses have much to offer the arts.

Yet we all seem to get hung up on the almighty dollar.

Trust me, it’s something we talk about every day. Probably multiple times a day. How much is this company willing to give? Who can we get to sponsor this event? How many employees do they have—and, how successful will the employee giving drive turn out to be?

The unfortunate reality of an unforgiving fundraising climate is that we sometimes miss the forest beyond the trees.

Businesses have a lot more to offer than financial support, so we need to make sure we take advantage of every resource. As marketing, fundraising, and community outreach professionals, we must always be looking for new opportunities to help the arts—even if there’s no dollar sign attached.

A lesson beyond the bottom line.

I learned (well, re-learned) this lesson the good way the other day. We’ve been having conversations with Northeast Utilities (NU) about their annual workplace giving campaign, and suddenly they struck upon an ingenious idea: wouldn’t it be great if the arts council had a compelling, well-produced video appeal to use for the 2012 United Arts Campaign? And, what if it featured Mayor Pedro Segarra, this year’s campaign chair? Is that something NU could offer?

The answer was yes to all of the above.

Obviously I loved the idea. The professional video and editing services at Northeast Utilities go way, way (way, way, way) beyond what I could afford to pay. So sure, they’re not cutting us a check. But, their pro bono, in-kind support will give us a valuable fundraising and community relations tool that we wouldn’t have been able to create on our own. Plus, it reminds the community of all of the good work our corporate partners do for nonprofits—a win-win for both of us.

Mayor Pedro Segarra and the Northeast Utilities video team getting ready to film.

Meaghan, one of our workplace giving associates, joined me at City Hall to meet the team from NU to film the Mayor’s address. While we don’t have the final cut yet, I can tell you from seeing the first edit that this is going to be a great video. What I can do is post a few of my (in)famous blurry cell phone picks for a ‘behind the scenes’ video set-up of the Mayor and the NU tech team in action.

This was a great, eye-opening (or eye-re-opening) experience about what businesses can contribute beyond the bottom line.

I was talking to another staff member today—Laura, also from the workplace giving team—about Americans for the Arts’ pARTnership movement, an evolving campaign that aims to build better, mutually beneficial relationships between arts organizations and the business community.

This story would be right up their alley…

Special thanks to Laura, Jon and Mark from Northeast Utilities, and everyone in the Mayor’s office for making this project a reality.

(Editor’s Note: This post original appeared on the Greater Hartford Arts Council Blog on May 10, 2012.)

This post is one in a series highlighting The pARTnership Movement, Americans for the Arts’ campaign to to reach business leaders with the message that partnering with the arts can build their competitive advantage. Visit our website to find out how both businesses and local arts agencies can get involved!

Katherine Gressel

The Challenge of Evaluation

In the Fall/Winter 2011 issue of Public Art Review, Jack Becker writes, “There is a dearth of research efforts focusing on public art and its impact. The evidence is mostly anecdotal. Some attempts have focused specifically on economic impact, but this doesn’t tell the whole story, or even the most important stories.”

Becker’s statement gets at some of the main challenges in measuring the impact of a work of public art—a task which more often than not provokes grumbling from public art administrators. Unlike museums or performance spaces, public art traditionally doesn’t sell tickets, or attract “audiences” who can easily be counted, surveyed, or educated.

A public artwork’s role in economic revitalization is difficult to separate from that of its overall surroundings. And as Becker suggests, economic indicators of success may leave out important factors like the intrinsic benefits of experiencing art in one’s everyday life.

However, public art administrators generally agree that some type of evaluation is key in not only making a case for support from funders, but in building a successful program.

Is there a reliable framework that can be the basis of all good public art evaluation? And what are some simple yet effective evaluation methods that most organizations can implement?

Key Challenges: Establishing Common Metrics and Collecting Reliable Data

One of the most common barriers to evaluating public art is defining exactly what we are evaluating. The intended “impacts” of various types of public art, and our capacity to measure them, are very different.

I find UK-based think tank Ixia’s 2010 Public Art: A Guide to Evaluation to be the closest thing to a common framework for assessing any type of art in the public realm. Ixia provides a helpful Evaluation Matrix that identifies a range of different values from which to select when considering possible outcomes of a public art project. The matrix accounts for the fact that each public artwork’s goals will be different depending on the nature of the presenting organization, site, and audience.

Most public art organizations are following similar steps during the planning phase of a project, identifying desired outcomes based on the specifics of the project. However, developing a common theory of change about all public art’s social impact may be an unrealistic expectation.

Systematic data collection via accepted social science methods, is also widely perceived as costly, challenging, and maybe even detrimental to the field. The few comprehensive studies connecting long-term, permanent public art to economic and community-wide impacts (such as An Assessment of Community Impact of the Philadelphia Department of Recreation Mural Arts Program) have led to somewhat inconclusive results.

So What Can We Measure and How?

The good news is that there are several examples of indicators that are more easily measurable in certain types of public art situations, largely thanks to new technologies and effective partnerships.

These include:

Testimonies on the educational and social impact of public art project
Groundswell Community Mural Project surveys mural artists, participating youth, community partners and parents before, during and after projects. Youth are also contacted every few years after a project is completed, to report on how Groundswell has influenced their ongoing development. Groundswell recently hired an outside researcher to build a comprehensive database to analyze data on both participants and completed murals.

An artist’s career trajectory after completing a public art project
Similarly, artist may keep an agency informed of future commissions, publications, and other accolades that come as a direct result of a public art commission.

How a public artwork is treated over time by a community, including whether it gets vandalized, and whether the community takes the initiative to repair or maintain it.
Organizations engage representatives from neighborhood partner organizations that house murals in regularly reporting on the artworks’ condition and observed community response. Similarly, such partners can report on how a public artwork has enhanced their own operations (such as whether it is being used in educational programs or marketing campaigns, or catalyzing further community development).

It is becoming increasingly possible to track, and increase, levels of audience engagement with public art via interactive technology.
Online media platforms such as blogs aggregate not only professional press coverage on public art, but comments by random readers. Public art agencies across the country have been implementing such technologies as interactive websites and mobile audio tours to solicit responses from the general public, increase community stewardship, and simply grow their audiences.

Public Art Fund’s robust Facebook page invites users to comment, and sometimes even quiz themselves on, past and present artworks and artists. Smartphone apps like Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park Association’s Museum Without Walls enable people to send in their own public art “stories,” or in the case of Kentucky’s TakeItArtside! app, earn points by checking in to different art sites.

Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program even has a section of its website where people can upload photos of murals they notice in need of repair—another way of measuring investment.

All of these systems are capable of, at the very least, tracking how many people download, log or dial in. In some cases, they generate basic demographic data, and information on which artworks or topics generate the most discussion and how people are responding.

While these tools do not generate conclusive evidence on public art’s impact on a community, they make it much easier than it was just five years ago to gauge what a broader general public is thinking and doing. It is increasingly feasible for public art organizations to quantitatively track not just audience engagement, but benefits to participants, and community stewardship of completed artworks.

Though there may not be one magic formula that works for all public art, I am convinced that we should not give up on the idea of evaluation.

Author’s Note: In January 2012, I first published the longer article Public Art and the Challenge of Evaluation on Createquity.org. The full article can be found here. I am also currently working on a follow-up post to be published in Createquity later this spring/summer, on public art agencies’ use of interactive technologies for audience engagement. Above, I summarized key issues and findings from the published article as well as my recent research.

"Wave Arbor" by Doug Hollis at Long Bridge Park in Arlington, VA.

(Author’s Note: This post builds upon prior pieces by Dr. Elizabeth Morton and Angela Adams.)

I enrolled in Dr. Morton’s Exploring Evaluation for Public Art studio as a way to complement my experience as a working artist-art educator with a limited sense of the planning and evaluation process for public art. Over the course of the studio I came to see evaluation not as a zero sum game meant to occur after installation, but rather as an ongoing series of assessments conducted by and for major stakeholders, including, but not limited to, the intended audience.

While public art evaluation clearly includes examining the perceptions of the general public, it must also examine the processes and decisions that influence, direct, and ultimately, commission, new works.

One of the most rewarding aspects of this studio was the opportunity for cross-disciplinary dialogue created by the intentional interface of urban planners, designers (in this case, architecture & landscape architecture students), artists, and arts administrators.

Each of these roles fulfills an important and different function in the life cycle of the public art project; yet all too often we work in isolation from one another and/or use language that is particular to one discipline and foreign to another. The studio proved to me that we have a great deal to learn from one another and that increased cross-disciplinary collaboration will continue to yield exciting new contributions to the field of public art evaluation.

For example, as a predominantly 2D artist moving into the more design-based role of the landscape architect, the concept of site analysis took on an expanded meaning. From a conventional fine arts perspective, a site is a location where an artwork is placed, not necessarily a place that an artwork might inhabit over time. Artists would clearly benefit from the designer’s perspective of understanding site as an ongoing process, with multiple actors; yet this is a concept that is rarely discussed in undergraduate or graduate level art programs.

From the literature and the artworks the examined, it is clear that there is an increased trend in public art towards more integrated, design-based works. This finding presents both unique challenges and opportunities for the artist.

My group conducted the aforementioned Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) of sculptor Doug Hollis’ piece, Wave Arbor. Our study found that the sculpture is so well integrated into the surrounding infrastructure that many users did not recognized the work as a piece of public art.

From an interview with Mr. Hollis we learned that he was not necessarily concerned with whether or not Wave Arbor was recognized as such, but that he was interested in having his work function as a “beacon” for the park. Thus our findings reveal an interesting and sometimes conflicting tension is set up between the need to integrate work and the desire for iconic works that act as placemakers.

How designers and artists approach this tension remains to be seen. Clearly, artists would benefit from working with designers to expand their understanding of design function and program so that their proposals might grow in this capacity while still retaining some sense of the provocative or transformational.

Results from this past semester reveal that designers and planners similarly profit when they are exposed to the often unique perspectives that artists employ, and that it is to their benefit to begin this dialogue early in the planning process.

One overriding theme from this semester revealed that while public art is often appreciated by an audience, it remains difficult for users to articulate how or why an artwork impacts them specifically. Existing literature also suggests that once equipped with more knowledge about an artwork, users feel empowered to share their experience.

Both of these finding were reinforced by our POE of Wave Arbor. While many interviewees thought the work was “cool,” most were hard pressed to elaborate as to why. Asking users to describe the sculpture or provide alternate names yielded important clues about the public’s reception of the work. Many users thought the sculpture generated alternative energy, for example, and our evaluation demonstrated that there is an interest in seeing such work.

From my perspective as an artist and art educator, user hesitation to evaluate or opine about aesthetics is not surprising. This finding presents a great challenge and one that we should collectively embrace.

While I appreciate the inherent usefulness of the internet in my life, I cannot explain how a series of zeroes and ones is ultimately transmitting this blog to the reader.

Likewise, how can we expect the public to evaluate an artwork without a basic understanding of design language?

If we know that an informed user is a more enthusiastic user, how might better art literacy change the perception of, and ultimately support for, public art and public art funding?

How might we incorporate such literacy into all stages of the public art process, beyond a small plaque that is often overlooked?

Lajos Heder

Evaluation is a different issue for artists creating commissioned work than for administrators running a public art program.

In my view, the administrator needs positive public feedback to politically (and financially) support the program. As artists we need feedback that help us become better artists.

It is much easier to imagine an evaluation of a whole program than to measure the value of a single artwork.

As artists we are all somewhat eccentric in our art making process. We combine research and rational thought with personal intuitions and observations in our own unique ways. We invent things that have not existed before.

Members of the public, who have not seen anything exactly like it before may love it or hate it at first sight. They may adapt to love it, or get bored over time. People who say they love the art, may never pay much attention after the first look. Others who are uncomfortable may eventually come around and gain something important.

My experience is that a large percentage of people pay very little attention to public art.

My sense is that general surveys of the public’s reaction to the artwork would tell me very little in terms of how I would go about creating my work. Of course it is essential to avoid negative reactions that would endanger the public art program that feeds us, although this is not always possible.

The feedback that means the most to me and effects the way I see my work, is the occasional thoughtful response, when someone has established a relationship with the work over time and makes the effort to tell me about it.

My work is about creating opportunities for people to interact with each other and their surroundings in public. When hear these reactions, I carry these observations over to the next project. A few in-depth responses mean a lot more to me than tabulated surveys.

Narric Rome

On May 10, U.S. Secretary of Commerce John Bryson and the U.S. Secretary for the Interior Ken Salazar released the U.S. National Travel & Tourism Strategy as developed through the Task Force on Travel & Competitiveness.

The task force had been set up through a Presidential Executive Order in January that called for a strategy within 90 days. President Obama announced the Executive Order at a visit to one of the most popular tourist sites in the world, Main Street USA in Disneyworld.

That same day in Orlando, FL, a new slate of members of the U.S. Travel & Tourism Advisory Board was sworn in by Secretary Bryson, including Americans for the Arts President & CEO Robert Lynch and Linda Carlisle, the Secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Cultural Resources—both critical voices representing the arts and cultural tourism community within the larger tourism sector.

In its first three months of work, The U.S. Travel & Tourism Advisory Board (TTAB) developed a set of recommendations to Secretary Bryson to inform his work, and that of the task force, on the development of the national strategy.

Among the TTAB recommendations that relate to the arts and culture were:

(1) the inclusion of the arts as an objective to attracting tourists to secondary markets throughout the country,

(2) how an “authentic” experience is critical to a quality experience, and

(3) the need to include local tourism partners, such as city agencies and destination marketing organizations as partners with the federal government.

Because the TTAB includes a wide range of representatives from the travel, tourism, hospitality, and restaurant industries, there are many other issues included in the set of recommendations forwarded to the secretary.

The strategy was released in coordination with National Travel and Tourism Week. It stated that last year, 62 million international tourists visited the United States and pumped a record $153 billion into local economies, helping to support the 7.6 million jobs in our travel and tourism industry. These numbers make tourism America’s number one service export.

The strategy sets a goal of drawing 100 million international visitors by 2021, which is expected to generate $250 billion annually in visitor spending by 2012. The strategy also encourages more Americans to travel within the United States.

The strategy also includes four items that should be of interest to cultural tourism leaders:

1) It recognized that, “A significant number of international travelers seek out nature- and culture-based experiences, such as visiting historic sites (40 percent of overseas travelers), cultural sites (23 percent) and national parks (20 percent)…Popular culture—including music, film, and television, and theme park experiences—is also a significant selling point.”

2) The report included a recommendation for federal agencies to partner with, and provide grants and technical assistance to local governments in order to attract and serve additional visitors. This would be in conjunction with Brand USA, the initiative responsible for promoting American destinations around the world. Brand USA recently launched the first global campaign with a song “Land of Dreams” by Roseanne Cash. The connected television ads include significant profile arts and cultural activities in its narrative:

3) There was a recommendation to create a national travel and tourism office at the U.S. Department of Commerce;

4) The report called for annual summits on travel and tourism to foster communication between federal agencies and tourism leaders.

What’s next? With the President’s approval, the Tourism Policy Council will coordinate implementation of this National Strategy among the federal agencies and boards like the TTAB.

While there are over 10 federal agencies involved in this effort, the pieces most connected to cultural tourism will be handled by Department of Commerce. At a recent convening of the Cultural Heritage Tourism Exchange, Bob Lynch briefed the group on the work of the TTAB and offered to those from the Partners in Tourism coalition, and all cultural tourism stakeholders, that he’d be happy to receive feedback and comments on these federal efforts.

The TTAB will be most active in tracking the implementation of these recommendations and we’d be interested to hear about what’s going on in your state or community regarding tourism and arts partnerships.

Penny Balkin Bach

Working in the field of public art automatically puts us in touch with the public, art, and its social context.

In fact, public art may be one of a community’s most overlooked and underappreciated cultural assets; it’s accessible “on the street”, any time, free to all, without a ticket, and diverse in content. It can be enjoyed spontaneously, alone, or in groups, and by culture seekers as well as new audiences.

There is data out there that supports the benefits of public art to the community.

The Knight Foundation and Gallup Corporation’s Soul of the Community study, for example, indicates that community attachment creates an emotional connection to place (which also correlates to local economic growth). They determined that the key drivers of attachment are social offerings, openness, and the aesthetics of place–all potential attributes of public art.

It’s fascinating that these drivers scored higher than education, basic services and safety, and the economy. Also, a local summer visitors survey conducted by the Greater Philadelphia Marketing & Tourism Corporation (GPTMC) found that of the city’s ten most popular outdoor activities, outdoor art ranked second–above hiking, jogging, and biking.

Public art can create community attachment, if we overcome perceived barriers and open pathways for engagement. With this in mind, the Fairmount Park Art Association developed Museum Without Walls™: AUDIO (MWW:AUDIO)—a multi-platform interactive audio experience, available for free on the street by cell phone, audio download, Android and iPhone mobile app, QR code, or online as streaming audio and audio slideshows.

While our delivery system is comprehensive and impressive, our primary goal was to develop a conceptually sound, content-rich program that could be adapted to new technology over time. In my opinion, getting too caught up in the technology is a trap; it’s like jumping on a high-speed train, without knowing where you’re headed.

MWW:AUDIO was inspired by the idea that there is a unique story, civic effort, and creative expression behind every public sculpture in Philadelphia—and that an ideal way to tell each story is in the environment and context of city life.

A sculpture with the real estate-style sign promoting MWW:Audio.

We identified the “spontaneous viewer” as an audience unique to public art: this person typically has not planned ahead, paid a museum admission, or signed up in advance for a cultural tour. Because our intent is to attract people on the street, we’ve used “real estate” type signs and bus shelter posters to call attention to the program.

The hallmark feature of MWW:AUDIO is the use of an “authentic voice” model—that is, people from all walks of life who are personally connected to the sculpture. Nearly 100 “voices” from all walks of life are featured: artists, curators, scientists, writers, historians, civic leaders, and family descendants.

Because each person has something distinctive to communicate, each speaks with enthusiasm and delight. There’s no narrator, so listening is almost like eavesdropping into a fascinating conversation. Some of my favorite audios are Iroquois, Jesus Breaking Bread, LOVE, the James A. Garfield Monument, and–yes–the movie prop from Rocky.

Our planning process integrated evaluation throughout, and we worked with Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. to develop a formative evaluation instrument. We defined the qualities of the audio program that we wanted to measure–including that listeners feel that they have learned something of value, prompting a sense of curiosity about Philadelphia’s public art.

Our findings indicated that people wanted to “get smart” and ‘‘Almost all of the participants said the audio programs evoked new ideas about the sculptures and helped them look more closely at a work of art they had previously passed by without much notice.”

The impact of the program has been both positive and measurable.

Fairmount Park Art Association's Museum Without Walls AUDIO launch event at Love Park.

For the first time ever, we have quantitative tools to track our audience and guide our programmatic development. When we launched the project, the total number of visits to our websites increased 300 percent compared to traffic in the three months prior. With analytics we are able to measure the program’s impact by tracking the time, location, and call duration of participants, resulting in more than 25,000 in-depth audience contacts. We have also experienced an increase in Facebook fans, people opting-in to our mailing list, and membership donations.

The qualitative audience response has also been overwhelmingly positive. We are able to receive direct user feedback through our cell-phone system, and one particular feedback message reinforced the broad reach of MWW:AUDIO.

Trolley driver Carl Brown left us the following message: “I drive a Philadelphia trolley, and drive pass number 12 (the All Wars Memorial to Colored Soldiers and Sailors) everyday…and I think it’s wonderful that you have this program set up. It was educational. It was educational for me, and emotional, as an African-American. It makes me feel much better to be a part of Philadelphia.”

Angela Adams

Arlington County’s public art program benefited greatly from our collaborative effort with Virginia Tech and Americans for the Arts mentioned in Dr. Elizabeth Morton’s post from earlier this week.

Like many programs across the country, we are adjusting to the new normal of increased scrutiny of public spending as it relates to the arts. We are also adjusting to our recent relocation from the Department of Parks and Recreation to that of Arlington Economic Development and are just beginning to understand the difference in priorities between the two agencies and how these will impact our future work.

We are currently working on developing a white paper on the value of public art to Arlington through four lenses: community and social benefits; civic design and placemaking; economic; and aesthetic/experiential.

It is helpful that the field of economics has begun to look seriously at developing measurement tools for such intangible phenomena as human happiness or fulfillment as well as the intrinsic value of the arts, so there is an increasing body of literature to draw from here. The findings of the Virginia Tech students will similarly help us in making the case for how and why public art adds value to our community.

To summarize some of the more interesting (even surprising) findings of the four teams discussed in the previous post and their value to Arlington’s public art program:

1. The group who surveyed artists with whom we had previously commissioned artwork identified that most artists had not conducted a formal site analysis before developing their concept. While the response rate was low (six responses of the close to 100 polled), this told us that we need to both explain better to artists what site analysis consists of (borrowing from the standard practice in the fields of architecture, landscape, and urban design) and why we expect that they should do it.

As a result, we will be hosting a training session on site analysis for artists jointly with Washington Project for the Arts’s “No Artist Left Behind” workshop series later this year, and will change our standard contract to include site analysis as a specific deliverable to accompany the concept proposal stage.

2. The team who polled stakeholders and community members on their thoughts about the Water Pollution Control Plant fence enhancement piloted a number of strategies for engagement (including intercept surveys of users of the trail adjacent to the fence, for which a surprising number of people actually stopped to participate in!) the findings of which were summarized in word clouds by type of stakeholder. The team recommended that Remy & Veenhuzien develop a temporary public art project as a mid-project deliverable to keep the stakeholders engaged and updated on their process. As a result, we will be writing this expectation into the artists’ contract and presenting this as a creative example of civic engagement, currently a hot topic for our community.

A photo of Long Bridge Park in Arlington County, VA (Photo © Jesse Snyder Photography)

3. From the two groups who addressed the recently completed first phase of Long Bridge Park, we learned two important things.

First, that without sufficient information about the artwork, visitors were unclear as to both the presence and “function” of artwork in the park (in full disclosure, signs with information about the artwork were developed in cooperation with the artist, but had yet to be installed by the time of the survey). The survey responses also provided a baseline of attitudes about the artwork which will help us track any changes in attitude about the artwork over time.

Secondly, we learned that our design team approach benefits most from the existence of a pre-existing relationship between the artist and the one or more member of the design team and that, if anything, the non-artist members of the design team would have welcomed the input of the artist even earlier in the project development.

In summary, our major takeaways from this studio were:

• new expectations from the artists we commission for projects (such as that of improved site analysis and on-going community engagement techniques) need to be incorporated into our current processes (RFQ, selection panel, outreach, artist contract) as well as our management of the artists’ work as their advocate in the design process;
• in the recalibration of our work plan for the right balance between temporary and public art projects, we can combine both as two stages in a single project; and,
• when we hire artists to work as design team members, we need to work harder get the artist in as early and as high on the food chain as possible.

As I often say, we are still aspiring to the level of this that we achieved with our program’s very first project, artist Nancy Holt’s design of the entire Dark Star Park.

This is an especially important reminder as we strive to play a greater role in the leadership for good public design in Arlington and seek to demonstrate the unique contributions that artists can bring to such projects.

Rebecca Rothman

Public art is a tough sell in a bad economy.

When senior centers are closing and library hours have been cut back, convincing city leaders to spend money on art feels like an exercise in futility.

Instead of focusing on how projects boost the economy after their completion or counting positive media reports, we’ve begun to look the people behind the scenes for numbers that count.

Artists create a concept and are given credit for the resulting project but they don’t work alone. There are many others who help make the project a reality. From fabricators to material suppliers, each firm brings expertise to the process to ensure that the project is designed and built to last.

We’ve asked artists and design leads to list each subcontractor they hire under their contract with our program. Then, we ask the contractor to do the same. These people equal JOBS.

We’ve tracked our projects this way for the past five years and found that 85 percent of the work created by our program has been completed by local firms. Each time we present a project or upcoming commission to city leaders, these job numbers are included and guess what? They’re listening.

Now, instead of thinking solely in terms of enhancing public space, we’re thinking like the Work Programs Administration. Instead of asking leaders to learn the language of art, we’re speaking in terms that they understand and appreciate.

The firms are delighted to be given the work as well as the credit for the job. City leaders are thrilled to have more people working here in Phoenix. We’re elated to have a great product in the end to add to our collection.

The result is a win for all, most notably the public.

Brandi Reddick

The idea of art as an investment is by no means a new concept. Art collectors jet set to major fairs in Hong Kong, Basel, and Sao Paulo hoping to secure their next big investment purchase; gallery owners and curators are constantly on the scout to discover the “next big artist”; and auction houses are drawing in record sales for artworks.

As administrators of public art, it is vital that we take some clues from the art world and evaluate public art as an investment for our community and start scouting for that “next big artist” who lives and works in our community.

The unique nature of public art inherently makes it one of the most valuable and exponentially increasing public assets for a community. I have the great fortune of working for Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places (MDAPP), which boasts a collection of nearly 700 works of public art.

Throughout its 40-year history, the program has commissioned some of the most significant contemporary artists in the world to create one of a kind, site-specific works of art. As with most works of public art, the commissioning cost of these works only reflects a percentage of their current value.

For example, in 1985 artist Edward Ruscha was commissioned by the Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places Trust to create “Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go”, a site-specific installation for the Main Library consisting of eight 16-foot-long panels mounted around the lobby’s rotunda. The work was commissioned for approximately $300,000.

Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go, 1985-89

Since the time of this commission, Ruscha’s career has skyrocketed, and I’ll never forget the day our office received a phone call asking if we would sell the work for $6 million. (I should make it clear that the caller’s offer was politely declined, with the understanding that the public art collection was not for sale.)

So, when that new public art commission comes along, perhaps public art administrators should advise their committee members to start thinking like a collector.

Look at artists whose work would be an investment for your community. Take a thorough look at the artist’s resume, notice which galleries are showing the work, and which major institutions are collecting the work.

It’s also important to take risks with public art, discover that “next big artist” and support the careers of local, emerging visual artists.

Although the MDAPP collection boasts some heavy hitter names, we are also very invested in furthering the careers of visual artists who live and work in Miami-Dade County. In addition to the Art in Public Places program, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs oversees the South Florida Cultural Consortium (SFCC) Fellowship Program, which offers one of the largest regional, government-sponsored artists’ grants in the United States, awarding $15,000 and $7,500 fellowships to resident visual and media artists from the five counties.

Since it was established in 1988, the consortium has awarded close to $2 million in fellowships to over 200 artists. The fellowship program receives over 300 applications each year, affording our staff the opportunity to take a fresh look (removed from public art) at the work that is being created in our local studios.

In fact, it is not uncommon for a fellowship recipient (or applicant) to receive a public art commission.

"Reflect" by Ivan Toth Depeña, 2011 Interactive Video Panels Miami-Dade County Public Art Collection

In 2011, artist Ivan Toth Depeña, a Miami native and former recipient of the SFCC Fellowship, was awarded his first public art commission. The site was extremely high profile—the lobby of our Government Center—which is the entryway to the 29-story headquarters building of Miami-Dade County government. This work, which I repeat was Depeña’s first public commission, would become one of the most visible works of public art in the MDAPP collection.

Completed in November 2011, the artwork (entitled Reflect) resulted in a dynamic installation of permanent, site-specific public art that illuminates, engages, and responds to the activities of the lobby space.

Due to its high visibility, Reflect is now considered one of the most prominent works of public art in the county and has generated increased interest and awareness of the public art program from other county departments, citizens, and employees.

Visitors and employees have commented that Reflect has transformed the lobby into a bright, welcoming and interactive space that symbolizes the spirit of excellence and public responsiveness of county government.

The work is pioneering technological advances in new media art and utilizes a custom software system designed by the artist. Here’s a video of the installation:

This is only one example of an investment in a local artist that paid off exponentially.

Public art programs should support the careers of local artist and serve as a platform for the trajectory of their work.

Take a risk on that promising artist who has a fabulous portfolio, even if they don’t have public art experience under their belt. The reward may be well worth it.

Kaity Nicastri

Editor’s Note: Following Public Art Network Council Member Sioux Trujillo’s post, project partner Kaity Nicastri describes the benefit of using logic models in evaluation.

Evaluation. That’s a hefty word. Most people cringe when they think of evaluation, but it’s really not that scary and doesn’t need to be feared.

With the arts in mind, evaluation can take on many forms—it can be programmatic, project-based, user/patron feedback, monitoring sales/attendance, but they all have a unifying theme: understanding the impact of your work.

I started working with a community public art program over two years ago as a Master’s-level intern from the University of Michigan’s Community Based Initiative. With a concentration in policy and evaluation, I fit the nerdier side of social work. I’m not your average caseworker.

In my new role, I was faced with a program that had surveys, but no real evaluation and no understanding of the results of the surveys. Simultaneously, taking a technical evaluation course, I started with a logic model. This process is truly the crux of all good evaluation. If you don’t understand what you are trying to accomplish, evaluation will mean very little.

Through the logic model, I learned invaluable information about the structure of the program and goals of the directors, funders, and participants for various investments in the program. The logic model process created a useful document that informed my evaluation knowledge and development.

Once the logic model was established, I could determine the goals of the evaluation and design a preliminary evaluation. Afterwards, through various consultations, I decided on a process that would gather the richest, most valuable information possible. Then the hard part began: data collection.

You would think that with all the dissidence around community work, and if it really makes neighborhood life better, more people would have jumped at the chance to give us their opinion, but there are challenges that evaluators face, especially in urban settings.

If you send surveys home, find a way for participants to return it free of charge. If you have people who are not able to attend meetings or events but are on your email lists, offer the survey online. Online survey tools are many and varied in their capabilities. Some common/popular ones are: Survey Monkey, Zoomerang, Constant Contact, Form Site, Kwik Surveys…the list goes on.

Once you jump the final hurdles and have enough responses, you can begin analysis of data and use the analysis to report results.

Depending on the survey design, you might need qualitative analysis or quantitative analysis. Qualitative analysis means you have results that are open-ended responses. That means people are able to give their own opinion on a question or statement, which offers some valuable feedback on programs or projects. However, you have to spend more time to find commonalities among answers.

The other type, quantitative analysis, is numerically based. This doesn’t always mean that the answers are numbers, but rather that all answers are standardized. This could be a multiple choice answer, true or false, a scale [(strongly)agree, (strongly)disagree, neutral] or a similar way to standardize answers. Demographic data falls into this category.

You can also use mixed analysis with qualitative and quantitative questions. This provides comments and opinions but also basic data like demographics, participation, and similar standard information.

Evaluation helps programs. Any results should be taken to heart and used to improve services.

Most importantly, you should be learning from evaluation. Evaluation will allow you to integrate your results by creating new practices and processes that will solve past problems and improve future positive results.

My Environmental Education Evaluation Resource Assistant has a good process cycle chart for evaluation:

What type(s) of analysis have worked best for your programs? Share in the comments below.

Christina Lanzl

Many of us will readily name a favorite work of art in a treasured public place, a priceless cultural asset. Similarly, we can probably point to the destruction of such works by neglect, human or institutional failure, war, or extreme events. To put a finger on why certain outdoor works of art are so important or to provide a clear value can already be more challenging.

If anything, one can point to the unique, irreplaceable quality of the treasured cultural asset. If anything, the qualifier ‘priceless’ may be the only accurate valuation of something that is of high quality and unique. Because public art programs and cultural planners have been asking for such a tool kit, the Public Art Network at Americans for the Arts is currently developing a framework for public art evaluation

While public art programs create permanent public art in partnership with contemporary artists, these works immediately begin their art historic trajectory once installation is complete, beginning with a short and long-term maintenance plan. Thus, collection management evaluation criteria for public art can serve as a point of departure and should be coordinated in partnership with existing preservation initiatives. At the national level, heritage preservation institutions like Save Outdoor Sculpture take on advocacy and protection roles in the U.S., joined by local and state historic preservation organizations.

Once the approach has been determined, the process needs to zero in on the types of questions and figures that not only quantify, but also qualify the value of public art. Evaluation of public art projects and programs is a difficult task, particularly so if the researcher considers them within the framework of the cultural or urban context.

Attempting to create a state-of-the-art evaluation structure would need to include site-based qualifiers in any assessment. Such endeavors could be likened to a municipality or a state being asked to submit figures on general or specific well-being of residents.

Interconnectedness is the key to understanding public art and cultural assets within the fabric of a community. Prior to commencing the research, the meanings and boundaries of the terms relevant to the field of public art would need to be defined. Public art inventories and maintenance records contain statistical tools that would aid in measuring size, age, condition, value, and other tangible criteria of an individual object. However, beginning with the question of the contextual framework, other typologies apply. An interdisciplinary effort lies at the heart of delivering a successful methodology for public art assessment.

Any appraisal would need to include an analysis of the more ephemeral qualities of a vital public space and its cultural assets, such as the psychological effect of an environment on the individual, as well as cultural vibrancy and legacy, both short- and long-term.

Urban planners like Jan Gehl and the late William H. Whyte have been instrumental in developing the tools for assessment of public space. Consequently, a review of the principles and methodologies they developed would add important criteria for the valuation of public art uses.

Economic social researchers like Richard Florida have reported their findings on the popularity of cities to the creative class, which also has much to do with a successful public realm, including permanent, temporary, and performative public art and cultural assets.

Most public art programs and affiliated municipal and/or state agencies will lack expertise or time to develop, distribute, evaluate, and report findings of such complex surveys. Opinion poll firms and think tanks would be more adequately equipped to conduct such inquiries with the necessary professional acumen, although the engagement of knowledgeable public art professionals would be crucial to ensure the approach and gathering of data fulfills.

Much work lies ahead—let’s move forward to accomplish the task at hand.

Sioux Trujillo

I recently resigned from a public art program in Detroit that was housed inside a small arts college. During my time there, evaluation became a big part of my job. It was critical to track, define, and report for the future of the program to serve as a baseline for success for the arts institution. Before this, my idea of success was primarily based from the perspective of the studio artist.

The projects that were created in the neighborhoods of Detroit were much more complex because each project was so very different from one another, involved different people from diverse backgrounds, and had community defined goals and artist selection.

When I set out to create a plan of evaluation I realized this was going to be a complex task.

My first obstacle was simply trying to figure out what to call the projects. A seemingly simple thing turned into more than I expected.

I started to compile a list of all the different names that artists and organizations are using to define public art which involves the people around the project in some way.

•    Social Aesthetics
•    Relational Aesthetics
•    Social Justice Art
•    Community Art
•    Placemaking
•    Social Sculpture
•    New Genre Public Art
•    Tactical Media
•    Cultural Activism
•    Social Practice
•    Interventions
•    Happenings
•    Participatory Art

Looking at this list only made more questions about useful evaluation and the purpose behind evaluation. Thankfully, I found a partner to help me in a not so obvious place.

I had formed a working relationship with the University of Michigan School of Social Work to provide a place for social work graduate students to do meaningful work in the Detroit communities as part of their capstone studies. My social work intern, Kaity Nicastri, and I started a dialog about evaluation and our joint vision was developed over time.

Our partnership was a turning point for me when it came to my depth of thinking and understanding evaluation. The experience planted a seed in me about evaluation that is still growing.

A piece of public art that wants to involve a community can do so in many ways, big and small. All of these kinds of projects, no matter what you call them, are very dependent on the context in which it is created. They have a complex social, cultural, political, and economic system at play. Just because a project is thriving in one area of the city doesn’t mean that you can just replicate that project and get the same results.

The projects themselves can appear differently to those who have not been engaged in the project directly. Visually a project can look very deceiving. It could be small and insignificant but the dialogue around that project can be big and could have started other projects and have had a domino effect on the community.

Just as true, a large visually stunning project can ultimately have no real lasting impact on a community.

Community change takes time, patience, community organizing, authentic engagement, careful listening, and hope.

What do you do when those things don’t happen fast enough to document on your evaluation? This is where things really get interesting for me.

Since timing is critical for all evaluation. The story and the shapeshifting behind each project is where the true authentic evaluation exists.

I think the more dialog we have the closer we will get to verbalize this kind of evaluation.

What do you think?

Editor’s Note: Here are two examples of evaluation Sioux provided us for you to check out — Year One Project Evaluation Report and Year 3-4 Survey Template for the Community.

Dr. Elizabeth Morton

This course had its origins in a graduate assignment I had back in the early 1990s. My intimidating professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design provided only two requirements for our final paper: 1) that it be “interesting to him” and 2) that it be no longer than three pages.

I was relieved that he approved my topic of “how do local public art agencies evaluate their projects,” but was concerned about the page limitations. I needn’t have worried, since after reviewing as many of the agencies as I could in the pre-internet era, I did not find much.

At a presentation on public art in Arlington, VA, nearly 20 years later, a question from the audience made me think about my project again. I imagined that as the public art field had matured, surely there had been efforts to institutionalize some evaluative practices, but when I started making inquiries I realized that this was still a relatively unexplored topic.

Since Angela Adams and Liesel Fenner had both been kind enough to speak in my urban design policy class over the years, I approached them with the idea of conducting a graduate studio that would try to take on this topic. It’s a great testament to their openness to inquiry and commitment to the field that they very actively participated in the studio and contributed many hours and many insights.

Recognizing the complexity of the topic and the limitations of the three-month semester, and not having any idea about what we would find, we titled the course, “Exploring Evaluation for Public Art: Arlington County as Laboratory.”

Our 12 students hailed from five different countries and from three different programs (planning, architecture, and landscape architecture). To my delight, two of them were practicing public artists!

In a period of about six weeks, students got a crash course in public art, the Arlington County program, and various methods of evaluation. Students summarized whatever relevant studies we could lay our hands on (mostly from the UK). Although we were helped immensely by the writing of Harriet Senie, Katherine Gressel, and Animating Democracy’s new social impact website, we found little in the way of local government policy in the U.S. that might help guide our efforts.

We settled on a strategy of divide and conquer. Students formed four teams and adopted distinct methodologies to examine particular aspects of the outcome or process.

Guided by some of the goals in Arlington’s Public Art Master Plan, the studio developed some indicators for measuring past and future success. Since we knew that “before” snapshots were often missing in evaluation attempts and that public opinion often evolves over time, we tried develop studies that collected baseline data and that would allow Arlington to measure change as projects moved forward.

For example, one team took on the task of documenting existing attitudes and expectations for the future public art piece along Four Mile Run Park in the vicinity of the Water Pollution Control Plant. To achieve this, the group polled users of the park, members of the Advisory Coordination Group, and plant employees, and compared the results.

Two teams looked at the recently opened Long Bridge Park, which incorporated a piece by Doug Hollis. The first interviewed members of the multi-disciplinary design team to assess how the dynamic among members affected the process and the final result. The second developed a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) polling users of the park about their views of Wave Arbor and assessing whether the stated visual and functional objectives were met. The survey captured impressions of this new sculpture and examined its perceived value as an iconic feature of the park.

A final student team designed a survey for artists who had created works in Arlington, polling them on their processes of site analysis and community engagement; the results inspired students to make some suggestions on how the county’s standard public art contract could be modified.

I had thought that given the constraints of the semester, we may have had to be content with simply setting up the studies, but students insisted on getting out into the field. Although some of the results are still preliminary, the data received so far has been quite interesting.

At the end of the term, we produced four reports (totaling more than 50 pages!), which we hope provide models for continuing use by Arlington County and fodder for discussion in the public art community.

Has this type of project been undertaken at a higher education institution near you? If not, is this something you would consider doing?