Better Government Association

Daley's art-selection plan OK'd by council committee

May 18, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

Mayor Daley’s plan to dramatically overhaul the way Chicago chooses the artwork that adorns public buildings was rammed through a City Council committee today amid complaints that “secrecy” won and the public lost. “It astounds me in the 21st Century. They’re saying it’s inconvenient for us to let the public know what’s going on,” said Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association.

“If that’s a good enough reason to get out from under the Open Meetings Act, we might as well scrap the whole thing.”

By eliminating both the Project Advisory Panels and the Public Art Committee and replacing them with powerless “public forums,” Daley is thumbing his nose at the transparency he claims to embrace, said Robert Adkins, an attorney representing Scott Hodes.

Hodes has filed three different lawsuits over the last eight years accusing the Public Art Program of violating the Open Meetings Act, neglecting to post minutes of meetings and record votes and failing to explain to the public the process by which art commissions are awarded. He’s now accusing the Department of Cultural Affairs of breaching a 2005 settlement tailor-made to resolve those violations.

“The department is pushing for legal authority to once again select artists in secret. This represents nothing more than a crass attempt to take the public out of the Public Art Program. Moreover…it would be a radical departure from a 29-year-old ordinance that has always provided for public meetings,” Adkins said.

Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg countered that the selection process has become “bogged down with bureaucratic procedures, paperwork and protocols.”

It takes an average of five or six meetings to choose an artist. During the last five years alone, Weisberg said her staff has been forced to schedule 188 meetings for 32 projects and place 3,384 phone calls to arrange those meetings.

“We would like to streamline and simplify it and at the same time make it even more inclusive,” she said.

“I am always looking for new and better ways to get things done. Just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t make it reasonable or efficient and this particular process is neither.”

For 29 years, City Hall has been required to set aside for public art 1.33 percent of the overall budget used to construct or remodel libraries, police stations, airports, senior citizen centers and other government buildings. Millions of dollars have been spent. The art collection has grown to more than 700 pieces.

The ordinance advanced Friday maintains that percentage. But, instead of two levels of formal selection committees, Weisberg would be required to consult local residents, neighborhood organizations and businesses identified by the local alderman. At least two public forums would be held to air community concerns before artwork is chosen.

It’s yet another coup for Weisberg, a close friend of First Lady Maggie Daley who just inherited control over management and programming for Millennium Park. But, artists Tony Fitzpatrick argued that the public got the shaft.

“The public is often inconvenient. The public is often inefficient. But, they’re also wholly necessary. When you sharpen these things down to the few deciding to the many, you do something antithetical to the ideas of democracy and art,” he said.