This is a little nit-picky, but I have to disagree with the assessment of the state of public art in the case of Chicago. Downtown Chicago especially has a amazing amount of public art. The city specifically impressed me as have much *more* public art than Minneapolis (http://www.ci.chi.il.us/CulturalAffairs/PublicArt/). If you count unique architecture as public art, Chicago is even further ahead. The reason (in recent times) for this is primarily Chicago's Public Art Ordinance (http://www.ci.chi.il.us/CulturalAffairs/PublicArt/PublicArtOrdinance.html), which requires that part of the budget of any building project be devoted to public art.
The point being here that a quick walk around downtown Chicago or almost any neighborhood of the city will reveal a wealth of public art which I think far exceeds that of Minneapolis and that almost all of this public art was commissioned by organizations established by the city or the federal government (such as the Works Progress Administration during the 30s and 40s which was responsible for the commissioning of many of the amazing murals in the city schools of Chicago). Generally, without this "public bureaucracy," quality public art falls by the wayside. Ethan Jewett the Wedge Writing from Chicago, where I'm in school, for one more week At 01:09 AM 6/2/2002 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Over the last 20 >years I've lived in a NYC suburb, Delaware, downtown St. Louis and Chicago. >And I grew up in a Boston inner ring suburb. A decent cross section of >non-western America. I would have to sayhMinneapolis has more Art, however >defined, then any of these places. >Why do we feel the need to drag a public bureaucracy into this? > > Mark Greenwald, The Wedge _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
