Following an outcry over a vote to choose a replacement for a controversial statue of J. Marion Sims in Central Park, a group of elected officials and community members are seeking to reform New York City's selection process for public art amid a growing chorus of complaints about questionable choices and lack of transparency.
Council members Inez Barron and Diana Ayala have called on the City Council to hold an oversight hearing on Percent For Art, a program created in 1982 under the Department of Cultural Affairs that is charged with commissioning the city’s public art displays.
"Our community’s voices were initially ignored by the panel that was convened to recommend an artist," Ayala said in a statement last week, adding that the recent selection process in East Harlem had resulted "in people feeling betrayed, tricked, and undermined."
The trouble began on Saturday, when four out of seven judges on an advisory panel for Percent For Art voted in favor of a proposal submitted by the renown contemporary artist Simone Leigh.
The only problem was that the community overwhelmingly favored Bronx-based artist and sculptor Vinnie Bagwell. Her proposal, titled "Victory Beyond Sims," depicted an 18-foot winged angel statue that included carvings of black women’s faces on her skirt. In one hand, she holds the rod of Asclepius, a coiled serpent that symbolizes the field of medicine.
Listen to Elizabeth Kim discuss the statue controversy on WNYC:
The submissions were commissioned in an effort to replace a long criticized statue of Sims, a white 19th-century doctor who conducted experimental surgeries on enslaved black women. Last year, following a review of "symbols of hate" ordered by Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city's Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove the Sims statue at 103rd Street near the northeast corner of Central Park. To ensure community involvement, the city formed a coalition called the Beyond Sims Committee to take part in the commissioning process for a new public work.
Other finalists included Wangechi Mutu andKehinde Wiley, who was commissioned to paint President Barack Obama's portrait and who recently unveiled a bronze sculpture titled “Rumors of War” in Times Square to rave reviews.
Although she was lesser-known internationally, Bagwell's status as a homegrown artist appeared to have made her the local favorite.
Upon hearing the panel's selection, those in the audience, many of whom sat through a roughly seven-hour meeting, reacted with shock and then disgust. The moment was captured on video by Todd Fine, a local historian who has also been critical of Percent For Art, and first reported by the art news website Hyperallergic.
“We feel very betrayed,” M. Ndigo Washington, one of the members of the Beyond Sims Committee, said afterwards, according to Hyperallergic. “You continue to ask for our opinion, you continue to ask to participate in a process, a process that now feels rigged."
In a long series of tweets, Antwaun Sargent, a noted art critic who was one of the judges on the panel that voted for Simone, outlined his own objections to what he described as a confusing process that had led the community to believe that they would ultimately decide the winning artist, putting judges in a difficult situation.
"The law says a panel (made up of different stakeholders) vote on the art that is publicly and permanently installed in the city," he wrote. "However the city had allowed the community to weigh in all along. The [judges] in the room, wanted to rightly know, why then were they allowed to pick the work?"
As it turned out, the panel's vote did not decide the final outcome. Shortly after the announcement of her selection, Leigh withdrew from consideration, leaving Bagwell, who garnered the second most votes, as the default winner.
The issue has reignited a long-running debate over who gets the ultimate say in determining the images and symbols that appear in public spaces. It comes at a pivotal moment in the city. Following a national push to remove confederate monuments, Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2017 ordered an evaluation of all of New York City's monuments and public images. Out of that effort came the project spearheaded by First Lady Chirlane McCray called She Built NYC, which sought to address the gender imbalance by decorating the city with more statues of women. As part of the initiative, which was run by the city's economic development corporation, the city put a call out for suggestions for subjects. The artists are picked through the Percent For Art commissioning process. Last year, Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to U.S. Congress, was selected to be the inaugural statue. The Percent For Art panel has appointed the artists Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous for that commission.
In March, the city announced four more selections—Billie Holiday, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Dr. Helen Rodríguez Trías, and Katherine Walker.
The project and its selection process has attracted its fair share of critics—some committee members were upset about "the decision to honor an individual instead of a group," and others have spoken out about the individuals chosen so far. Among the latter chorus is actor Chazz Palminteri, who last Friday called into the Brian Lehrer Show to confront Mayor de Blasio over the city's decision not to erect a statue for Mother Frances Cabrini, a beloved nun considered the patron saint of immigrants. Although de Blasio said she was still under consideration, on Monday Governor Andrew Cuomo added fuel to the fire by announcing his own plan to build a statue for Cabrini.
According to Fine, the political squabble has missed the larger point, which is that amid the clamor to produce statues, the de Blasio administration has been "stressing the city's public art processes to the breaking point."
Since its inception, Percent for Art has completed 330 commissions with another 120 in progress. By law, one percent of the budget for certain city-funded construction projects must be spent on public art. The Percent For Art program oversees the selection of all those artworks.
Perhaps as a result of the pressure to produce, those administering the Percent For Art program "are not listening to people," Fine said. "It's entering the twilight zone of lack of awareness."
Earlier this month, Fine, who serves as the president of the Washington Street Advocacy Group, along with Jacob Morris, the director of the Harlem Historical Society, sent a letter to Council member and chair of its cultural affairs committee Jimmy Van Bramer raising their concerns and asking for an oversight hearing.
Back in 2017, the City Council passed legislation sponsored by Van Bramer to install changes to the program, including greater transparency and community input.
Both Fine and Morris have also complained about Percent For Art's handling of an abolitionist monument slated for a yet-be-completed Downtown Brooklyn green space currently known as Willoughby Square Park. The panel recently completed its first round selection process, which narrows down dozens of submissions to typically five finalists. The finalists are then asked by the city to submit a proposal, upon which they are then considered formal candidates.
Under the rules, finalists are not publicized until they become candidates.
According to Morris, who has over the years waged a successful campaign to get the city to honor black historical figures, such a policy smacks of secrecy. "So they picked the five finalists and nobody knows who they are?" he asked with incredulity.
In another objection, he and Fine have both maintained that the Percent For Art panel privileges art over historical narratives. But Morris contended, "Aesthetics isn't good enough when it comes to the historic monuments."
Asked to respond to the recent criticisms, a spokesperson for the city's Department of Cultural Affairs issued a statement saying, “The City’s efforts to commission permanent public artwork strive to balance the many voices and stakeholders involved in every project. For Beyond Sims, we opened up the charter-mandated process to integrate a coalition of community partners—many of whom had led the effort to remove the Sims statue for years."
In a telephone interview with Gothamist, Van Bramer said that he was open to having a Council hearing on Percent For Art, adding, "You can never do too much community engagement."
But he also praised Percent For Art as being a "robust" and well-intentioned program. He pointed to Saturday's full meeting in East Harlem as evidence of the community's strong level of engagement in the process. The panel also has the flexibility of including other practitioners, he added.
"The thing about art is that it's very subjective," he said. "Beauty is in the art of beholder. You’re never going to reach a consensus when it comes to public art."
UPDATE: An earlier version of this misstated one of the elected officials who has called for reforms to the city's public art selection process. It is Council member Inez Barron, not state assembly member Inez Dickens.
