TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
Weathersbee: Artists’ lawsuit is a lesson in how not to bring public art into struggling communities.
This is not how this is supposed to work.
Last year, Paint Memphis collaborated with 150 artists to paint murals on walls, overpasses and largely abandoned spaces through many of the city’s struggling areas. This project was done in the name of public art.
But Paint Memphis forgot one thing: They didn’t involve the public who would be exposed to these works.
That’s why, when a mural of a maggot-invested, rotted-skin zombie, and one of Elvis with snakes crawling from his mouth popped up at Willett and Lamar — in a transitional corridor where Midtown and South Memphis mingle — last year, many people were appalled, not inspired.
The works spurred complaints, not compliments, from people living near them – in an area where the specter of violence and death haunts them enough without a reminder when they drive along Lamar Avenue.
But the city, in another bungled move, recently painted over seven of the murals instead of the controversial ones – and destroyed $35,000 worth of work. Now, 12 of the artists are suing the city, claiming that painting over the works constitute a copyright violation.
It’s a mess. But it’s a mess that could have been avoided.
It could have been avoided if Paint Memphis had been sensitive to the communities where the murals were painted – something that public art projects should strive to do – instead of being caught up in an outmoded practice of recruiting outside artists to paint what they feel like painting, said Cynthia Nikitin, senior vice president of the Project for Public Spaces.
“This kind of technique – of dropping artists in from other places and leaving them to do what they want is so 1980s,” Nikitin said.
“These are practices that have been failures, and it’s not the national model of acceptable practices of public arts placements.”
And while Karen Golightly, director of Paint Memphis, said it wasn’t feasible to vet 33,000 square feet of murals, as some City Council members suggested, it is possible to meet with people in the communities where the murals will appear and learn about them before painting.
That’s what world-renowned muralists like David Guinn, who has painted 40 murals in cities around the world, has done.
“I think you work with people in the community, and the people who are going to have to live with it,” said Guinn, who is based in Philadelphia. “It’s entirely possible to have artistic freedom and be sensitive and responsible to the place where the mural is …In fact, if you don’t learn the place, you’re missing the whole point.”
Worse, this bungled episode between Paint Memphis and the city has done the opposite of what public art is supposed to do. It’s created division and not unity.
For example, Nikitin said, a muralist in Minneapolis is working with poor and homeless youths in skills related to creating the art, such as making scaffolding. Those skills can be transferred to the job market.
“In creating public art, we should be asking how that art could be used for community development,” she said. That’s not what happened here. When City Council member Jamita Swearengen called the zombie mural “satanic,” last November and said her constituents were complaining about it, they were mocked for it.
Golightly, who said the neighborhood association was unable to organize community meetings with Paint Memphis regarding the murals, also said anyone who was afraid of a mural had watched too much Scooby-Doo, while the artist who painted the mural, Dustin Spagnola of Asheville, North Carolina, said the council members’ objections sounded strange and close-minded.
The condescension was unfortunate – because public art can be a powerful vehicle for interpreting the lived experiences of people in communities.
But when an artist follows his or her whim in painting public art in struggling communities – Spagnola said zombies were fun to paint – and the public is turned off by it, it feels like a form of gentrification, and the people who are subjected to it feel even more voiceless.
The artists whose works were mistakenly destroyed, of course, have every right to sue. Hopefully, the city will look at this fiasco with Paint Memphis as a cautionary tale – and not give up on public art.
Already, Mayor Jim Strickland has said in the future, the city will try to bring in artists to work with residents and to create art that honors them.
That’s a good start, because public art is a good thing if it actually involves the public.
“The community is a client, and the artist is in service to them,” Nikitin said.