Across the world on the English typing internet, various human beings have engaged in cataloguing public art in their communities. These are mainly volunteers even if a few people can spend "company time" working on the project. Please send me more volunteer sites at gw@glennweiss.com 100% SELF FUNDED Philadelphia Art I far as I can tell Chris Purdom is just a guy with a hobby who has photographed and catalogued nearly 500 images. I especially like his "people" category. So far he has found 14 public art works of Ben Franklin. Public Art in … [Read more...]

Florida is hot (not hip) and humid (sensual too.). To succeed outside, the designer must know where the sun is all times and how best to find some breeze. These are very serious issues for the success of any outdoor space away from the beach. Together with the extra water that feeds the more luscious plants and trees than the other Hollywood, the careful designer can use nature to tweak - a little - the dominant globalism of placemaking. Tweaking is all we can expect. Globalism has won ( or one). Click here for first part of essay. Click … [Read more...]

Just a Quickie Check out the brutal assault on Fred Kent and the Project of Public Spaces (PPS) in the March issue of Landscape Architecture. The magazine opens with a generic panning of his method in the articles section by Linda McIntyre then concludes with the assault by Laurie Olin in the Critic at Large. Very rare thing in professional circles. The landscape architects are completely frustrated by Kent's insulting language regarding visual joy in public spaces and his empty methodology resulting in preconceived solutions from supposed … [Read more...]

What do architects bring to the urban landscape? Primarily ignorance of all the rules. At least the best do. In the other Hollywood, north of Miami Beach, Margi Glavovic Nothard's Young Circle Arts Park opened on March 16, 2007. I wish she could upstage Weiss / Manfredi's Olympic Sculpture Park the way that Gehry's Guggenheim at Bilbao pushed Meier's Getty to the back seat. But like Bilbao, the Seattle park has a tight dramatic setting that is impossible competition for just another flat place in Florida. Glavovic Nothard is my friend and … [Read more...]

In the mid-1990s, I visited a scary Johannesburg. The hotel had non-uniformed armed guards carrying guns. Drug dealers were on hand. Unlike other parts of South Africa, everyone spoke of the dangers after dark. Yet, art went on. I can see in my memory a black man and a white man playing tennis inside the main dining room of Jo'burg's abandoned historic prison. During the performance, the men talked of their different lives and their confrontations. At the same moment, whites and blacks admitted to terrible murders as part of Bishop Tutu's … [Read more...]

Why is the relationship between architecture and visual art so persistent in Argentineans? Clorindo Testa may be the most successful visual art and architect to live since Le Corbusier. Visual artist Guillermo Kuitca's paintings breathe in the dark space of the theater. As a public artwork, Kuitca interpreted the DPZ site plan for Miami's Aqua Development in 2005. Emilio Ambasz haunts in imaginary world between poet, earth artist and architect. From Uruguay, but raised and educated as an architect in Buenos Aires, Volf Roitman recently … [Read more...]

I admit it. I have looked down on arts and crafts street fairs as a kind of subspecies of the artworld. The fairs are fully acceptable as cultural phenomena if composed of truly local makers, especially with ethnic or migrant identity. But not acceptable as a place for the educated artist as was defined historically in the 20th century by New York museums and galleries. Images from Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, Tampa, Florida, March 3 & 4, 2007 Yet every winter weekend in Florida, an arts festival of talented artists fills the downtown, … [Read more...]

One of the best things about writing on Public Art and Public Space is the lack definitions. The field has no rules as to what is aesthetically successful. No rules on what kind of creations are included. No rules on which art centers get to officially generate the new and interesting. As my wife and I have attempted to sell my wife's painting at an arts festival this weekend, I leave to you the Switch on London project. The work is by lighting designers and focuses on the lack of pure color in our world. Some of the designers are creating … [Read more...]

On March 1, 2007, the City of Miami Beach establishes the 6th, 7th, or ? arts district in the Miami Metro Area. CANDO, Cultural Arts Neighborhood District Overlay, is centered on the Convention Center, home of Arts Basel. Other institutions include: New World Symphony, Bass Museum, Miami City Ballet, Jackie Gleason Theater, the Miami Beach Botanical Garden and Art Center South Florida. Lincoln Road is the main social space with cafes, artworks and smaller performances. Miami Metro is sprouting arts districts in the 21st Century: North Miami … [Read more...]