The Perils of Public Art
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
On August 16, nearly five years after the city of Evanston commissioned artist Lincoln Schatz to create a $170,000 sculpture for its Maple Avenue parking garage, Evanston officials will finally dedicate the resulting work. It won’t, however, be the cluster of giant Plexiglas disks Schatz proposed five years ago–and it’s not located anywhere near the garage. Though Schatz was advanced $51,000 for the commission, a couple years into the project (and, Schatz says, after many city delays) he informed officials that neither the size nor the budget would work. Evanston asked for its money back; Schatz, who’d incurred expenses, said no, and both sides called in their lawyers. Late last year the standoff was settled: the city’s public art committee picked one of three existing Schatz sculptures as a substitute and he was allowed to keep the advance. Their selection, called Penelope, is a modest clump of four Plexiglas panels rimmed with steel. It stands partially obscured by a bush on a spit of parkway at the heavily trafficked corner of Ridge and Emerson, looking like a distant cousin of the rusty Metra viaduct nearby. Public Art Committee member Laura Saviano says the piece has received a number of compliments; she was shocked when some city council members used the U word to describe it. The dedication comes as Evanston debates its next art commission: a $300,000 doodad for Sherman Plaza.
In addition the committee has $117,000 left over from the Schatz project. But the group’s focus now is on Sherman Plaza, a 25-story downtown condominium that will have a city parking garage and the $300,000 public art project attached. The city handled the advertising for the commission, and a sparse response has committee members wondering if the ads went out too close to the May deadline. “We only got seven proposals this time,” Saviano says, whereas the garage project drew hundreds of inquiries and 33 proposals from “all around the world.” Nevertheless, the selection panel has whittled the seven down to three and paid those artists $2,500 each to create and present models, which they reviewed last month. They’re now down to two finalists but have qualms that are keeping Macsai up at night.
