Fayetteville units plan public art project

FAYETTEVILLE — The city’s promotion and arts commissions would work together to find and pay for more public art projects under a plan city officials proposed this month, though many details still need to be filled in.

Under the plan, the Advertising and Promotion Commission could send out a call for visual arts proposals, which the Arts Council might jury and then recommend which projects the commission could buy with its sales-tax revenue. This way, the city would directly seek public art instead of waiting for offers to come in, with one panel providing the expertise and the other providing the money.

“The Arts Council’s never done this before,” Matthew Petty, a promotion commissioner and City Council member, said at a Nov. 17 meeting on the subject with other promotion officials and Dede Peters, a city outreach coordinator who works with the Arts Council. “They just have to be willing to take it on, and we have to believe they have the expertise to do it.”

The advertising and promotion committee twice a year gives part of its proceeds from half of the city’s 2 percent hotel, motel and restaurant sales tax to support marketing and related costs for organizations and events that draw visitors to the city. This year it gave about $216,000.

The dozens of requests often include some for artists and art projects, which the promotion commissioners — who come from business, tourism and city backgrounds — have often said stray outside their advertising focus and experience. The Arts Council, a volunteer panel comprising nine artists and people with art backgrounds, could step up for those requests, promotion commissioners have said.

Commissioners raised the idea of working together in June, after the promotion commission awarded $11,250 to muralist Jason Jones for the Enjoy Local painting near the Town Center on the square.

“I think this is going to begin an onslaught of people who want to do public art, and we don’t have a process in place for it,” commissioner Hannah Withers, co-owner of Maxine’s Tap Room, said at the time.

The two panels must decide on ground rules for applicants and the partnership and on the amount of money involved before the plan begins.

Kym Hughes, executive director of the promotion commission, said she supported the idea but would like to hear recommendations from a public art policy study in the University of Arkansas’ political science department, which should come by the end of the year, before putting the plan in place. She also wants to make sure the commission doesn’t dig too deep into its reserves.

Besides the community grants, the commission also uses its roughly $3 million in sales-tax revenue for its own operations, paying for Walton Arts Center renovations and other major projects, and marketing the city.

“While I am a big proponent of the arts, I believe it is very important, as we are having these discussions, that funding is set aside for bidding on meetings and conventions as well as sports tournaments,” she wrote in an email Tuesday. “It is equally important that we make an effort to cast our net wider to bring meetings and events that have a larger visitor impact to continue to replenish and grow the [Advertising and Promotion] funding resources.”

Withers and Peters also have raised concerns about how to ensure public art is maintained and protected and who would pay for it. Petty said many of those concerns would work themselves out.

“Part of the jurying process is answering all of those questions,” he said.