It's one of the odd features of public art that people often don't notice it. It becomes the thing that you walk around on your way to work. Even art that has some initial impact becomes part of the landscape, neither anodyne or annoyance, just sort of there.
This, in fact, is what constitutes a relationship with a piece of public art, whether you're aware of seeing it or not. It weasels its way into your consciousness when you're not looking. It changes the space you live in.
For a couple of years, I made my daily run through Myrtle Edwards Park, past Michael Heizer's Adjacent, Against, Upon, without really seeing it. It was no more and no less than the landmark that meant my run was beginning (on the way out) and then almost over (on the way back). About a year after I gave up running for more sedentary activities, I found myself back in the park looking at this work I hadn't realized I knew so well. I saw, as if for the first time, the motion implied by the three elements, the rough-hewn pieces manipulated by the hand of the artist--a contrast of texture and intention. My relationship with it had evolved, almost without my participation.
What happens, then, when a public sculpture is removed? Does the empty space scream out its vacancy, or does it register as a less obvious hole in your vision, a nagging feeling that something's not right?
In some cases, the loss is greeted with more glee than lament, and this is the case with Fountain of Waterfalls, a multimedia sculpture by Glenn Alps. The sculpture's future in the new Civic Center is uncertain. Created and installed in 1961 when the then-new Seattle Municipal Building was built, Fountain is a complex piece: a cast-cement monolithic structure adorned with leaf-shaped forms and bronze panels, set in the middle of a plaza with cement benches, interior and exterior lighting, and plumbing. Water was meant to cascade from the top of the monolith, in a sheet that would be broken by the protruding leaves. Fountain's style is very early '60s (a good match for the building's rather unfortunate architecture), but without the relentless purity and autonomy of form that sculptors such as Smith, Anthony Caro, and even Alexander Calder chased with single-minded dedication. It's more decorative, more self-conscious, and utterly tied to its site.
This, despite my earlier philosophical ramblings about the invisibility of public art, is a sculpture that most people seemed to hate. "Truly good public art endures beyond the period and ethos in which it was created," says City Council Member Peter Steinbrueck, ever so tactfully. "The Glenn Alps sculpture was one of the more graceful aspects of city hall--it humanized it. But it wasn't able to evoke a strong and positive response over time."
Now, those who saw Fountain of Waterfalls as nothing more than a blight on the landscape might never have to gaze upon it again. The sculpture has been dismantled and stored while the new Civic Center is under construction, but it's quite likely that it won't ever be unpacked, at least not in its entirety. As the Seattle Arts Commission decides the fate of the work, it has to address a question posed more than once by the current glut of public building construction: What happens when the site the art was created for disappears? "When art is integrated into a site and physically tied to it, there are a number of problems with re-siting it," says Barbara Goldstein, the SAC's public art program manager. "One is that the artist might object, and another is that the scale could be wrong. Another is that the work has a specific identity with that period of art and really needs a building of that era."
The Alps sculpture is enormous, encompassing as it does a whole plaza, so the problem becomes how to find a new site that matches the old in scale, style, and meaning (although Steinbrueck points out that having the plaza surrounded, as it was, by a parking lot was very bad planning, and, indeed, not very civic in spirit). The artist died in 1996, leaving no instructions about what to do in case the work needed to be removed. In the absence of clear intent from the artist, the SAC has created a steering committee made up of members of the SAC's Deaccession Committee, along with people who knew Alps and his work. This group will decide whether to re-site the whole work, a part of the work, or, failing those options, to give it to another nonprofit organization or sell it on the open market.
Another problem is that the sculpture is in terrible repair. It was poorly constructed to begin with and leaked almost from the beginning; the fountain element of the work hasn't been turned on for years. The plumbing needs to be completely reconstructed, and the monolith, already cracked, was irreparably damaged in the March earthquake. The plaza was popular with skateboarders, who of course added their own brand of damage.
When the company responsible for taking down the work, Fabrication Specialties Limited, estimated the costs of dismantling, the firm determined that it would cost roughly the same amount to reconstruct the monolith element as to carefully take apart and store it. In the end, that piece of the sculpture was demolished. Goldstein estimates that, conservatively, it will cost about $150,000 to rebuild the sculpture, in addition to the $30,000 it has already cost to dismantle. This seems like a lot of money, but it reminds us that public art is not a one-time expense. Had Fountain been properly maintained throughout its lifetime, this amount would be substantially less. (Also, Mayor Paul Schell just spent $35,000 on a tree for the new plaza, so who's to say?)
Many of the other works being displaced by construction of the new library and the new opera house have already found new sites, and the portable (not permanently sited) works will also be relocated. Should the SAC fail to re-site, give away, or sell Fountain, there is one last resort: destroy it. This was the fate of Richard Serra's Tilted Arc, a substantially more reviled work that lived in New York City's financial district for most of the '80s. In 1989, after hearings, a letter-writing campaign, and plenty of governmental wrangling, the sculpture was cut into three pieces under cover of the night and taken to the scrap-metal yard. I rather liked Tilted Arc, all the more because of its controversy. I suppose that, eventually, I'll miss Fountain of Waterfalls as well.
