Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Monday, December 14, 2020

Outdoor photography exhibits as public art and public history

I was going through a recent NYT, and came across an article/photo essay on the Ghosts of Segregation photography project by Richard Frishman.  He records elements of the built environment that were created to facilitate and maintain segregation, such as "colored doors," separate entries to cinemas and other places.

Negro League baseball games took place at Hamtramck Stadium in Hamtramck Michigan.   

Two of the photos featured in the Times online article were from the Detroit area, where I grew up, and were about area history that I knew nothing about.  

Similarly, years ago I read an obituary in the Times about the prominent educator Jewel Cobb, and I learned from it that for more than 100 years, the University of Michigan campus didn't even allow African-Americans to stay in dorms.  That's not something I ever learned during the many years I was in Ann Arbor.

My Budapest Photo Project, displayed in Madách Square, Budapest.

Earlier in the day, looking up images for Madách Square in Budapest (also because it was featured in a photo published in the Times), I came across a story about a public photo exhibit last year in Madách Square, about the city from the perspective of the homeless ("My Budapest Photo Project: The Capital Through the Eyes of Homeless People," Hungary Today).

Salt Lake City has a public art project called the Temporary Museum of Permanent Change, which has stands placed on the sidewalk-facing perimeter of some parking lots along 200 South in the Downtown.  

The displays change frequently and may touch on current issues in the community like development and land use, public events of great import, activism, etc.

This is easily adaptable to other places.

There's another project in Salt Lake right now, placing public art on vacant lots, buildings, and a recycling dumpster in a local park ("This outdoor art project adds vibrancy to overlooked parts of Salt Lake City," Salt Lake Tribune).  

Reading that article, before I came across the Frishman or Budapest projects, I was thinking how these kinds of exhibits need to be placed not just in derelict places or temporarily in large, centrally located places like Madách Square, but in neighborhood parks and squares, libraries should have rotating exhibits*, etc. ("Radio Chipstone: How a Museum Represents Its Community," WUVM/NPR).

I remember such an exhibit on the Liverpool Waterfront, although I can't find my photos.

1000 Families by Uwe Ommer, presented in Chicago, 2004

Chazen Museum, Madison, Wisconsin: exhibit of photographs by Kay Chernush on human trafficking.

In Baltimore, the Walthers Museum had a program of displaying copies of paintings in its collection, outdoors, across Baltimore and Howard County ("Walters Art Museum goes off the wall," Baltimore Sun).
Walters Museum spokesman Matt Fry tells why the sturdy replica of "Attack at Dawn" was placed on top of Baltimore's Federal Hill. The outdoor exhibit called "Off the Wall," is designed to make art more approachable.  Photo: Janet Podolak, News-Herald, Ohio.


Salt Lake's Parks and Public Lands agency is very good about including permanent historic and park interpretation signs in most of the city's parks, which provide teaching moments about history, landscape, flora and fauna, and the environmenet.

These are important things to learn about.  Every city should have a traveling public exhibit about civil rights in their community, etc.

Otherwise, people are able to avoid confronting or acknowledging the reality of history, especially with civil rights and segregation (which is sadly apparent when you read the comment thread on an article like this one, "Too many of D.C.’s youth are victims of violence — or causing it. We have to help them all," from the Washington Post).

With regard to library exhibits, DC Public Library and Anacostia Community Museum did do a project where the ACM created smaller exhibits for libraries serving neighborhoods featured in the exhibit, "A Right to the City."

But the parent exhibit was so good, that the much smaller neighborhood presentations were disappointing, at least to me, because they were so abbreviated.  Still, it provided the opportunity to learn more and hopefully led to some people visiting the parent exhibit.

But more generally, I argue that neighborhood libraries should be repositioned in part as cultural centers with regular exhibit programs ("Update: Neighborhood libraries as nodes in a neighborhood and city-wide network of cultural assets").

Ride!Philadelphia cultural interpretation board in a bus shelter. 

Relatedly, transportation systems should provide exhibits on transit history within bus shelters, transit stations, etc.

Over the years, I've come across such displays around the country.

Ride!Philadelphia was a program that did that in Philadelphia, placing historical displays in bus shelters (information sheet).  Actually, what they did is create area maps, and therefore had a blank side on the back, which they used to present transit history.  

I've seen transit history information posted in vehicles in San Francisco (the streetcars) and Portland, and at transit stops, such as in Walla Walla, Washington or a historical trolley waiting station in Baltimore.  

I can't find a photo, but there is a nice cultural interpretation sign outside the Queen Street bus station in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Some of DC's Cultural Trails feature signboards with transit history also.

There is a traveling exhibit based on the book Terminal Town, about the various transit terminal buildings and structures in Chicago, that I saw displayed in Chicago's Union Station.  

But it has been displayed in public buildings across Chicago, such as at the Thompson Government Building.

Folks walking through the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014, pause to view the “Terminal Town: Celebrating 75 Years of Travel to the Windy City,” exhibit on display. DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development is launching a six-month community program to explore Chicago’s history and future as the epicenter of U.S. passenger transportation. “Terminal Town: Celebrating 75 Years of Travel to the Windy City,” opens a traveling exhibit Sept. 1-5 at the James R. Thompson Center, 100 W. Randolph St., and continues through the fall with tours, events and a new 300-page illustrated guide by transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman. (DePaul University/Jamie Moncrief)

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9 Comments:

At 12:22 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

http://wallawalladrazanphotos.blogspot.com/2018/05/historic-site-signs-of-walla-walla-2020.html

 
At 1:38 PM, Anonymous charlie said...

off topic:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-14/wonderful-co-and-the-u-s-navy-are-battling-over-california-s-water?sref=4NgeXq8Q

 
At 2:01 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Great story. Thank you.

When I was in DC, I went to at least two CGLA Infrastructure conferences. Their work was the source of an initial set of projects proposed for Trump's first "Infrastructure Week." I wrote about it then.

Some were water projects and there were presentations at the conference, basically of investors buying properties and taking the water rights for agriculture land and selling them.

And the water desalination project in Carlsbad. It was originally permitted for nuclear power I think, so they possess legal access to Pacific Ocean water.

There's been coverage in the past few years about Pom Wonderful and water, especially about almonds.

Seems to me that it's reasonable to legislate about agriculture concerning water use, in particular high water using crops like almonds and alfalfa, and restricting production given the likelihood of continued drought.

 
At 2:04 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

the issue is not unlike development encroaching naval installations in Greater Virginia Beach.

https://www.pilotonline.com/military/article_80d50303-9cae-5ea9-90e9-2dd59006c7eb.html

 
At 5:32 PM, Anonymous charlie said...

Also this:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/23/flint-water-crisis-2020-post-coronavirus-america-445459


You've talked a lot about resilience -- and a huge part of that is moving back to take control of our lives.

This stuff is hard, not fun work, and we have to relearn about how to do it. And a huge part is us learning and teaching ourselves and not just relying on hired expertise.

 
At 1:15 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Hmm. I think it's both. Doing it ourselves, learning and developing expertise, and working with other more skilled people as needed.

Before the election I started writing a big piece on national service, and how we need to do it, modeled on the New Deal programs, in part as a way to bring people from different backgrounds together, working together in accomplishing difficult things, bridging differences etc.

But given the Democrats got whomped creating such a system is unlikely.

Although I'd link "free college" to national service participation as one thing.

In college, working on projects, or the things I did in the 2000s helped to develop friendships and a sense of accomplishment on things, and at least in DC, some of this transcended race (definitely not perfect) but at the same time was bogged down in race matters too.

I guess I will finish up the national service post and offer it as a New Year's post. (There's one other I can try to write over the course of the rest of the week too, to have two New Year's pieces, maybe three. As I have done a wave of New Year's posts a few times over the past 10 years.)

 
At 1:19 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

wrt self help in DC, you have to build institutions that support it.

While I think the concept of ANCs is cool, at the same time it's very flawed, as they are set up with the idea that every issue needs to be solved "by government" rather than also with a goodly dose of self help.

I argue that a problem with ANCs is that they "cream off" and monopolize leadership at the neighborhood level, stunting what's available to local community and neighborhood organization.

Another problem of course is that they are completely underresourced, in money and technical assistance and capacity if they are to do projects on their own.

And as I argue, "neighborhood services" programs by the Executive Branch/Mayor and the various legislator offices is designed to promote incumbency not the inherent capacity of citizens and neighborhoods to work on their own agendas and accomplish things.

 
At 1:22 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Salt Lake is organized similarly to Baltimore County in that there are overarching "community councils" providing organizational representation for multiple neighborhoods. (Well, it's a mix, some of the bigger councils, along with more neighborhood specific groups.)

But with the pandemic, I haven't been able to learn if there are capacity building initiatives comparable to ones I've written about in the past.

http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2018/07/framingham-massachusetts-creates.html

I doubt it. But they are way more oriented to civic engagement and public communication than the average jurisediction.

 
At 10:06 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

The Flint story is interesting.

As long as you've read the blog, did you used to get DCMail. The editor once told a great story about this.

In the 1990s there was the water contamination issue in DC. (Many argue it was under-addressed.) People were unsure what to do. Then Marion Barry went on tv to say the water was fine, and even drank a glass of water on air to prove it.

Immediately all the local stores sold out of bottled water. People had no trust in Barry, so they believed that they couldn't trust the water either, because he was the messenger.

Trust is easy to lose.

The other thing is that the bureaucratic tendency to let things slide, even in extraordinary circumstances doesn't work.

In Flint, they were hampered by lack of money. Obviously the decision to not treat the water was inexcusable. But they should have immediately committed to rebuilding the piping system, to restore trust.

How does the CDC restore trust in what they do, when their decisions on creating a coronavirus test were so flawed.

Yep the Post did a big story on this over the weekend, but that's been reported by all the major newspapers since March, e.g.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-washington-failed-to-build-a-robust-coronavirus-testing-system-11584552147

In crisis, because people don't have a lot of experience making difficult decisions, there is a tendency to make bad decisions.

At least in the US and the UK.

 

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