Dallas’ arts commission votes to remove 14-year-old public art piece from White Rock Lake
Earlier this month the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs dispatched a press release once it had received official word that Frances Bagley and Tom Orr’s 14-year-old White Rock Water Theater sculpture needed to be yanked out of White Rock Lake. But there was no press release following the Cultural Affairs Commission’s vote Thursday night to actually do the deed.
In the end, only two commissioners voted against the artwork’s deaccession: former District 13 city council candidate Leland Burk and Mayor Mike Rawlings’ appointee, commissioner Giovanni Valderas, who, according to some at the Latino Cultural Center last night, apologized for the city’s poor caretaking. But as Kay Kallos, the city’s public art program manager, told us earlier this month, it will cost around $200,000 to fix the rotting poles that make up the artwork. So, instead, the city will commission another piece by the two artists. Because the city cannot afford to do both.
“In principle, I voted against the resolution because I cannot support or endorse the city’s failure to take care of its public art,” Burk tells The Dallas Morning News. “This was a waste of taxpayers’ money and disrespectful to the artists and the arts community in Dallas.”
He says he wants to make it “absolutely clear”: He is “pleased” the city at least came up with a “compromise” to commission another piece by Bagley and Orr. And he is glad it will go in a location, yet to be made public, where it will be easier to maintain the piece. But this ordeal, which lasted more than a year and is now headed to the city council for a final vote, is about far more than a single piece, he says.
“There is a larger issue, and I think the city has a lot of work to do to build the confidence of the art community,” he says. Among the most vocal opponents of the artwork’s removal was Nasher Sculpture Center chief curator Jed Morse, for whom messages have been left.
“The challenge is always money,” says Burke. “We want to make sure when we invest taxpayer money it is incumbent upon the city to provide for the maintenance of the art. In the absence of a commitment to maintaining the artwork, people begin to wonder what business does the city have commissioning and owning art.”
We could toss the Bronze Bulls into White Rock Lake and call it even.
No great loss.
So, where’s the art in the picture?
Who knew it was art?? I’ve been walking by there almost everyday for the last 10 years. I thought it was just rotting old poles that nobody took the time to get out of the lake. Guess I’ll stop & look at it tomorrow before another piece of Dallas history is ripped out & lost forever. LOL
If the city is going to pay the artists to create a new art piece then it should be something that is displayed where citizens of the city can actually see it.