You gotta have art #1

"Pas de deux," Shari Hamilton, Westhope, ND, SculptureWalk Sioux Falls.

The AP story "Small cities embrace outdoor sculpture," discusses how smaller cities like Sioux Falls, South Dakota, are utilizing open-air sculpture as a way to promote arts-based revitalization. The website SculptureWalk Sioux Falls shows all 50 sculptures. Because sculptors have a hard time displaying their work, this works for them, and the pieces are sold directly by the artists.

From the SculptureWalk Sioux Falls website:

SculptureWalk is an exciting exhibit of outdoor sculptures displayed year-around in downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Artists place their sculptures in the program for one year, and all sculptures are aggressively promoted to the public for sale. Artists are eligible to win any one or more of the 11 awards in the Best of Show and People's Choice voting. Awards total $24,000.

The SculptureWalk Guiding Principle - To be the highest quality, most professional, financially strong, artist friendly year-round outdoor sculpture program in the United States.

SculptureWalk adds artistic pizzazz to historic downtown and helps to grow the economy by helping to make Sioux Falls a more attractive tourist destination point, and a better place to live, work and play.

Wow, a commitment to excellence!

I like this a lot better than donkeys, cows, crabs, terrapins, etc., although I suppose such initiatives have their place, because it's "real" art, as opposed to kitsch.
Chicago was perhaps the first U.S. city to import this idea, which started in Switzerland. The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has enthusiastically adopted the concept. Flickr photo of the Irish Boxer Cow, Chicago Cow Parade, 1999, by Kaptain Krispy Kreme.

Index Keywords: arts-culture; public-art