What Makes Philly Art Good?

Over at artblog, writer Andrea Kirsh took the opportunity to dump on Philly's public art as an introduction to her review of two new books about public art in New York City. As Public Art Network gathers in Philly next June, here is my response to her.

Ms. Kirsh. Your assessment of the public art in Philly fails to grasp Public Art in its cultural and artistic role. Your critique is fine for readers in the artculture. From that perspective, you might be generally correct. But the artculture is generally limited in its abilities to assess public art as it is lazy. Local cultural investigation is just too much work, so remain with artculture values. I too in my blog at Artsjournal.com fail to sufficiently investigate.

As to Philly, first you need to provide links to www.philart.net with Chris Purdom's massive documentation of public art in Philly. And the mural database developed at UPenn is outstanding at cml.upenn.edu/murals.

Second: Many artworks in Philly dramatically outclass anything in NYC for their visual impact and cultural relationships. The scale of the giant murals of American African figures in distressed neighborhoods may be some of the most powerful public art works in the world. I know they stopped me in my tracks.

Tim Spencer by Cliff Hudson and Dr. J by Kent Twitchell

Herman Wrice by David McShane & Eurhi Jones and Malcolm X by James Burns & Ernel Martinez

The mosaic work of Isaiah Zagar covering thousands of square feet of buildings south of downtown Philly entertained me for an hour - a long time to appreciate public art. Lily Yeh's Village in Germantown with its memorials and murals should have international stature for its integration of community building and artistic excellence.

Isaiah Zagar. Photo by Mosaic Art Source

Lily Yeh's Village of Arts and Humanities

Philly's fifteen or more Ben Franklin public artworks is pleasantly insane. James Peniston installed the lastest in October, 2007. The Rocky sculpture at the museum strikes hard at the relationship between art, popular movies and picture taking - an important cultural relationship.

I continue to strive for intellectual and artistic excellence in public art, but with additional critical values added to important ones of artculture

James Peniston's Keys To Community