Monday, April 18, 2005

The $65,000 question

The stone monoliths at the foot of the new Brady St. bridge over Lincoln Memorial Drive and their partners at the other end of the bridge are the latest public art projects to see media attention. I commented previously I was not impressed.

Whitney Gould at the Journal Sentinel thinks the money could have been better spent.
"Walking around the site last week, I tried to imagine how this project might have been done differently even within its budget constraints. What if an artist had worked with the engineers in designing the bridge itself, perhaps creating a sculptural treatment for the supports at either end? Or what if the retaining wall had been turned into a work of art?"
These are great questions but it's hard to pick out an architectural detail and say to your friends, "I was on the committee that hired the artist to work with the architect to make this bridge." Far easier to say, "Yep, I picked out that $65,000 bunch of rocks." Although I think the phrasing would be different.