Reflections on the first Boston Public Art Triennial
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When the public art nonprofit Now + There announced it would rebrand as the Boston Public Art Triennial, my first question was: Why?
I put the question to Triennial executive director Kate Gilbert back in the spring. Her answer made a certain sense. It takes monumental effort to put up just one public art installation, and Gilbert was feeling a kind of fatigue from the drive to consistently present new work. Better to channel that energy toward a big event every three years in the hopes that it would make a bigger splash.
Of course, such an endeavor comes with its own risks. It’s more expensive and way more complex. Since the Triennial wrapped up at the end of October, now I wonder: Was it worth it?
Judging by the numbers, the answer seems to be “yes.” Between May and October, the works at the Triennial's 20 sites were viewed an estimated 2.7 million times. According to the Triennial, nearly 1.1 million people interacted with the art in some way, perhaps by taking a selfie or stopping to discuss it with friends.
These estimates were compiled by a consultant using information from events, existing studies of visitor traffic, cellphone data and on-the-ground research, and they are just that — estimates. But those numbers are far higher than the conservative appraisal of 200,000 visitors that Gilbert offered me in October. There was always a possibility that the organization would decide the payoff had not been worth the effort. But Gilbert is already plotting the next Triennial, in 2028. “I’m really happy with the success of this project,” she said.
For my own part, the Triennial was mixed, but ultimately worthwhile. I was pleased to see artistic risk-taking in Adela Goldbard’s exploding ship and New Red Order’s provocative monument near Quincy Market. I discovered beauty in Stephen Hamilton’s tapestries, elegance in Nicholas Galanin’s sculptures, and wit in Laura Lima’s uncanny forest creations. I found other pieces less successful, sometimes due to their placement in the urban landscape. Audience impact was harder to gauge. The Triennial’s own accounting suggests the project reached a lot of people. But did it pierce the wider cultural awareness? I don’t think so.
Gilbert acknowledged there had been setbacks. Over the summer, the Triennial had to take down one of its installations, “Matters of Consequence.” The sculpture by Chicago artist Lan Tuazon was installed in Mattapan’s Hunt-Almont Park in the spring. The skeletal, house-like structure was designed to encourage people to cultivate community. Perhaps they would use its plentiful shelving for a clothing drive, or to share their homemade kombucha. Two local organizations, Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition and the Urban Farming Institute, planned to activate the installation. The location, at a park that had been rebuilt in 2017 with new playground equipment and an outdoor fitness center, had been chosen based on the suggestions of community members.
By midsummer, the sculpture had been taken down. Gilbert explained that the city had asked for its removal after neighbors complained about people sitting on top of the structure, which had not been designed with playground safety regulations in mind. “We completely underestimated how attractive this thing would be for climbing,” Gilbert told me.
“Matters of Consequence” will be reinstalled at UMass Boston in January. Gilbert’s main takeaway from the debacle was that they hadn’t scouted locations earlier. Eight months of runway hadn’t been enough time to conduct thorough community engagement about the proposed site while also organizing the rest of the Triennial’s installations.
There was another lesson, too. “ There are communities, especially Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, that have been completely ignored or disenfranchised over the years, and there's a lot of, understandably, distrust of outside groups coming in,” Gilbert said. “This one was a rushed piece, and I regret that.”
“Matters of Consequence” was not the only installation to offer lessons about the difficulty of anticipating the public’s reactions to public art. As I wrote in a previous newsletter, the Triennial’s sculptures in the Charlestown Navy Yard were overshadowed by another public art piece — a huge bronze octopus — that was both more photogenic and more strategically placed to draw attention from passersby. Gilbert confirmed that they had not been aware of plans to install the octopus when they arranged to place Triennial sculptures in the same area.
“ It actually gave us pause” about how people like to engage with public art, Gilbert said. “They want to crawl on it, they want to touch it, they want to take selfies with it. So what more can we do in our work in commissioning that can draw on that desire without it being all spectacle?”
There were sometimes complaints from audiences that Triennial installations were difficult to find. Hamilton’s stunning 15-foot tapestry “Under the Spider’s Web” was tucked away in a second-floor lounge at Roxbury Community College. Hamilton, who grew up in Roxbury, felt strongly that the work should be shown in his home neighborhood. Even with signage, “Under the Spider’s Web” and its two accompanying tapestries prompted complaints from Triennial visitors. People would say things like, “I don’t feel comfortable here,” Gilbert recalled.
She stood by the decision to put Hamilton’s work at the college. “ Great art puts a little bit of discomfort in someone, and asks us to think about that,” Gilbert said.
Indeed, there is more than one way to evaluate the impact of public art. Fewer people saw Hamilton’s work than might have otherwise, but what did it mean to the students who lived in its presence, day in and day out? It was a message about their worth, as much as the purpose of the art: “Here is something beautiful that you deserve to enjoy.”
I went in search of Hamilton’s tapestries in October. They were indeed difficult to find, even by following the Triennial’s bright yellow signs. Eventually, a custodian pointed me up the stairs. I stepped into a high-ceilinged room with sunlight filtering through a skylight, expecting to see one or two students on their laptops or eating lunch. Instead, there was Hamilton, gamely fielding questions from a group of students gathered around the tapestry. The artist, who is trained in traditional African weaving, dyeing and woodcarving, explained to the students how those technical skills could be a conduit to learning history. No need to guestimate foot traffic or search for selfies online: Here was proof of public art, hard at work.
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