On Sunday, The Times-Picayune reported on City Council’s rejection of two proposed art installations in the French Quarter. The council backed the decisions of the Vieux Carre Commission and turned down Dawn DeDeaux’s efforts to install three, lit-up plexiglas stairsteps on the perimeter of Jackson Square, and Tony Campbell and Matt Vis’ proposed Bourbon Street manhole covers with the slogan, “You got them shoes on Bourbon Street,” answering the age-old Quarter hustler’s question.
Bruce Eggler’s story is a study in weasel words as commission and council members found reason after reason to reject the art while expressing their love of art. He writes:
Lary Hesdorffer, director of the commission, said it has no desire to create a Williamsburg and maintains there is a place for contemporary as well as historic buildings and other elements in the district.
In this case, the “contemporary” elements are two of the fiberglas, painted streetcars sponsored by the Young Leadership Council, which were approved for the Jackson Square pedestrian mall. You get the impression that these gaudy pieces are all the art they can handle because they’re banal, decorative-at-best presences.
Eggler writes:
Acting on the motion of Councilman James Carter, whose district includes the Quarter, the council voted 5-1 to uphold the commission and reject DeDeaux’s sculpture, though almost all the members praised the work and said their only objection was to its proposed location.
Some noted that Public Works Director Robert Mendoza, whose department has jurisdiction over public walkways as well as streets, had said he was concerned that “Steps Home” could pose a safety hazard in the mall because unwary pedestrians might trip over it.
Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis said, “I take to heart Mr. Mendoza’s comments about safety.”
Safety. Cynthia Willard-Lewis can claim to love art but oppose these because of the hazard to the shins of drunks so blind and visitors so citystruck that they’re gawking instead of watching where they’re walking.
Carter, Eggler writes:
called the sculpture “brilliant in its simplicity” and “very captivating to me personally,” but he said the city, especially since Katrina, has other “equally sacred places” where it could appropriately be placed.
Translation: It’s great, but not in my backyard. And the “Streetcar Named Inspire” pieces have “sacred” written all over them.
Carter, the lover of art, opposed Campbell and Vis’ manhole covers because:
he saw no reason “to celebrate that particular custom,” and the council voted 6-0 to uphold the Vieux Carre Commission’s rejection of the proposal.
Translation: the art speaks to a tradition he and the Vieux Carre Commission wish didn’t exist, and if you don’t acknowledge it, it isn’t there.
Read between the lines and its fairly clear neither group liked either piece, regardless of their protests to the contrary. Rather than fess us and say, “I don’t get it” or “I don’t like it,” they cling to age-old dodges. The story behind the story, though, is the ongoing effort to make the Quarter a place it never was – an artist-friendly, wealthy neighborhood. It’s a different sort of Disneyland, but it’s a Disneyland nonetheless. They want art, but they don’t want anything as provocative as Faulkner wrote in his day (it’s worth remembering he was entirely out of print until Malcolm Cowley edited The Portable Faulkner in 1946). When property values and quality of life issues drive commission and council decisions, the French Quarter moves another step farther into a history that doesn’t exist.
