Metro wants to know what you think about its art collection and musical performers.
“Metro’s Art in Transit Program is looking at ways to strengthen the program and understand how we can best serve customers through visual and performing arts in today’s diverse cultural scene,” Metro spokeswoman Sherri Ly said in an email.
Why not just ask Gene Weingarten? But never mind. ...
To many, the subway itself was a work of art when it opened for business more than 40 years ago, with its vaulted ceilings, sleek lines and brutalist style. But the system is also host to a number of other artworks, including mosaics, murals and a marble wall sculpture of a wave in the Archives Station that was given to Metro by Lisbon’s subway system in 1995. The most expensive piece in its collection is the Technology Triangle Colonnade at the Greensboro Station on the Silver Line.
Besides the few dozen public artworks throughout its system, the agency supports local performing artists in its stations through the MetroPerforms Program. Metro also co-sponsors the annual SummerSet DC concert series, which used to be known as Music on the Mall, Ly said. She said the Amplify survey is the first to look at its Art in Transit program, which began in 1997.
The Art in Transit program is an outgrowth of a federal initiative that began in the 1970s, with a boost from the National Endowment for the Arts and President Jimmy Carter (D). The thinking was that the federal government should underwrite efforts to make transit more inviting to its users and more expressive about the communities it serves. Engineers, whose concern was utility and such, couldn’t be trusted to make things look nice.
Among the first recipients of U.S. Department of Transportation arts funding were Boston, Atlanta and Baltimore. The funds given to Baltimore went to restoring architectural details in Pennsylvania Station. Other cities followed, and local transit agencies were soon required to spend a portion of their Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funds on artistic “enhancements.”
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA), in a paper on best practices for managing art-in-transit programs, said artwork helps build ridership by enticing “the choice rider” to use the system, creating a positive perception of the transit agency, conveying a sense of “customer care” and even improving “safety and security.”
Of course, the line between art and artsy schlock seems to be even finer when it comes to public artwork, which is often commissioned by bureaucrats and sanctioned by committees to meet a host of nonaesthetic, taxpayer-friendly criteria. It’s often stuff selected by people who haven’t set foot in an art museum since elementary school and think the same is true of their audience. What might seem edgy to some might seem offensive to others, and what seems fine might just be safely bland. Misunderstandings ensue.
Consider the New York City subway system’s “Life Underground” sculptures by Tom Otterness. Many straphangers view them as whimsical cartoons drawn in metal; others see them as a crime against bronze. (And others still see them as the work of an unrepentant dog killer.) In 2011, amid wails of disapproval from the public and Congress, the Army retreated from a plan to install $600,000 worth of art, including a 10-foot princess riding a toad, at the Mark Center bus depot in Alexandria.
As federal funding of the arts in general came under scrutiny, the commitment to funding art in transit systems was steadily scaled back. By 2013, art seen as extraneous to rail projects, such as stand-alone sculpture, was no longer deemed eligible for federal funding, although transit agencies could get money to hire artists as part of their design teams. By 2016, even that was verboten.
The District’s Metro now has 38 artworks throughout Metrorail and at several of its facilities. Curbed DC, in ranking the top 10, awarded the blue ribbon to the mural on the overhang outside Metro’s Bethesda station.
The works are funded from a variety of sources, including FTA grants, donations and pieces on loan from local organizations, Ly said. The Technology Triangle Colonnade, for example, was commissioned and paid for by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), the transit agency’s partner on the line that is planned to run to Dulles International Airport. The cost of that piece was about $325,000 and shared with Metro, Ly said. The Bethesda mural, by Juan Pineda, cost about $30,000, Bethesda Magazine says. The magazine says the cost was picked up by Bethesda Urban Partnership, the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and Brookfield Properties.
Artists and proposals are chosen through a competitive process by a review panel, which forwards its recommendations to Metro’s general manager for approval. Before December 2018, artwork was approved by the board of directors, Ly said.
As for its overall costs, Ly couldn’t provide one. She said Metro’s Art in Transit program is staffed by one employee and a contractor. The additional costs are funded through public and private partners, such as the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and other local arts councils.
The National Park Service and museums such as the National Portrait Gallery, Hirshhorn and the Building Museum chip in, along with performing arts centers such as the Kennedy Center and Strathmore. Some performers, for example, appear at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and receive an honorarium from sponsoring partners at no cost to Metro, Ly said.
We’d like to know your opinions, too. If you have thoughts or suggestions about Metro’s artwork or performing arts, email me at fredrick.kunkle@washpost.com., or leave comments below.
Read more Tripping:
