“Adjacent, Against, Upon”
As a libertarian, I have always been opposed to government subsidies for art. It seemed like an easy one: we’re not talking about soup kitchens for the down-and-out, but folk who yearn to be artists but can’t convince anyone to buy their work. Hey, it’s THEIR problem! If nobody wants to buy their stuff, why should the government force the public to buy it? When a judge of the King County Superior Court came down on my side — not completely on my side, but in a particular case — and was accused of being a right-wing philistine, I rose to her defense. My column was printed in the Seattle Times on June 2, 2004.
Judge Sharon Armstrong of King County Superior Court made my day May 21. The judge, who runs for re-election this year, ruled: “Seattle shall henceforth be prohibited from enforcing its One Percent for Art ordinance with respect to City Light.”
Former Mayor Paul Schell responded that the judge must be an “extreme right-winger.” But the judge did not proclaim that art, like a statement of religion or politics, is a personal, subjective and individual expression, and generally ought not to be sponsored by the government. That may be the right-wing view to which Schell referred.
Another view of art is that government may buy it but that it ought to compete with all other uses of tax money. This might be called the “priorities of government” view, after the budget process used last year by Gov. Gary Locke. In that view, politicians decide what things are most important for government to do and buy only those things. If art can justify itself, then buy it; otherwise not.
Seattle has never demanded that government art justify itself. For many years, city government has had a One Percent for Art program, amounting to a 1-percent tax on municipal construction within the city limits. This is a governmental establishment of art, tending to create an official “arts community” beholden to politicians for commissions and jobs.
Note what happens to this program when the city gets into a financial bind. Nothing happens to it. The city cuts back on library hours, emptying garbage cans in parks and a hundred other things that rely on the general fund. Art, which has its own protected fountain of taxpayer money, is protected.
One Percent for Art was set up not because art is crucial to government, but because it is not crucial, and if it had to compete with police and fire protection, water, electric power, libraries and ball fields, it would lose.
Judge Armstrong made a different and narrower argument. The Washington Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that City Light was created as an electric utility, and that city government, even though it owns City Light, cannot make City Light pay for street lights. Armstrong applied this logic to other functions. She was not a stickler about it; if the function had some close connection with the provision of electricity, it was OK.
The judge ruled that City Light could buy art for its own offices. But she said it “may not fund art that is displayed in other city offices” or art with “the primary purpose of improving City Light’s image in a particular neighborhood or community, or cultivating public relations.”
Out went the Wall of Death, the Wave Rave Cave, McCaw Hall lights, Ballard Gateway, Galer Street Overpass and Salmon in the City projects. Over the past four years, City Light has spent $2.8 million on art projects, much of it on these pieces.
The city had argued that Leni Schwendinger’s “Dreaming in Light” piece at McCaw Hall was worth $100,000 in ratepayer money because it uses low-intensity lights, thereby encouraging opera goers to use less electricity. Armstrong rejected this nutty argument.
A spokesman for the “arts community” told the SeattleTimesit was “comical” for a judge to turn art critic. Armstrong had not done that. But at the risk of being comical, let us turn art critic for one paragraph.
The case for government art would be better if the art were better. I do not argue that government art is obscene or anti-Christian or anything like that — not in Seattle. It is just not very good.
I will admit a middlebrow fondness for Fremont’s “Waiting for the Interurban.” But what can one make of the dinguses on the Ballard Bridge? Or Michael Heizer’s “Adjacent, Against, Upon” in Myrtle Edwards Park? The highbrows, who think the Fremont sculpture is trash, have for years paid homage to Heizer’s three rocks. What do they see in them?
They are entitled to their opinion — and the decency to raise their own money.
© 2004 The Seattle Times
I heard later that Judge Armstrong liked the column. I also got an email from a woman who said it was the first time in years she’d read the word, “dinguses.”