Alas, no lessons were learned from hoopla over Big Blue Ring

Bowfort Towers is the kind of experience that can sour Calgarians on all public art

Let’s meander down memory lane awhile to see if Mark Twain was right — history may not repeat but it sure does rhyme.

OK, as with many great quotations, no one’s sure Twain actually came up with the phrase but, regardless, the words do have a truth to them, certainly so in Calgary these warm, summer days.

So let’s look at comments by Richard White, a longtime Calgarian who’s been involved with city organizations as diverse as tourism boards, planning commissions and art groups.

“The negative impact is that it probably alienates some Calgarians from all public art. Unfortunately, when some people think of public art, they’re going to think of that one piece and think negatively of all public art.

“The actual placement of it doesn’t make sense to the average person and the piece doesn’t speak to the average person.”

Whoa. Aren’t we supposed to be stepping back in time? Yes, actually we are. Those comments weren’t about the latest pile of dirt, rocks and rusting steel girders on the city’s western edge now known as Bowfort Towers.

Nope, those were White’s comments from four years ago — amply echoed by most Calgarians including the mayor — regarding an earlier artistic boondoggle known as the Big Blue Ring.

Yup, that’s the one you point out to incredulous visiting relatives and friends after picking them up from the airport, explaining that no, it isn’t something stuck by the roadside waiting for a tow up to the oilsands, but is instead public art bought and paid for by bemused Calgarians to the tune of almost half a million bucks.

That was four years ago, but the similarities with the currently under-fire Bowfort Towers are both startling and revealing in equal measures.

First, there’s the price tag, about $500,000 in both cases.

Then there’s the placement on the city’s outskirts where passing motorists are the prime audience. Then there’s the fact both were imagined by artists outside of Canada — Berlin and New York respectively — and finally, there are howls of outrage about what the heck it is and why we would want it.

Yet, there are two important differences. First, the hoop came at a time when money was rolling into our city as energy prices soared. That’s hardly the case today as Calgary is still dragging itself out of a two-year economic hole. Second, the hoop fiasco was supposed to be a lesson learned — instead it’s a reminder of that old saying ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice ...”

So, to again visit the archives, this is what some said following the blue hoopla four years ago.

Councillor Druh Farrell declared that the artwork, which is called Travelling Light although it hasn’t moved a solitary inch as far as I can tell, ultimately had a positive impact by igniting debate and spurring change within the city’s art program.

“What it did do is identify some flaws in our policy,” she said back then. Those changes mandated that artists engage the public before developing a final concept. I guess we must have been snoozing after too many Stampede mini doughnuts when that great exercise in civic democracy took place regarding Bowfort Towers.

Meanwhile, Rachael Seupersad, superintendent of Calgary’s public art program at the time, declared it might take awhile for Calgarians to understand the concept behind the hoop before they feel the love.

“This piece over time will come to sort of identify very strongly that part of the city and so it’s a way of place making, or giving people a strong sense of place,” she told a local radio program way back then. Wow, really? So there is actually a place called Laughing Stock?

What it did do is identify some flaws in our policy.