Finally, someone puts into words why I hate the Olympic Scuplture Park.
And it ends up being Jason Fried over at 37Signals, who summizes:
Public art in a public outdoor space in the middle of public paths and public lawns yet you can’t touch it. The only interaction is visual. It’s standoffish. It feels like a missed opportunity…. Contrast this with Chicago’s Millennium Park. Public art and architecture that is entirely interactive.
Our sculpture park is all sculpture and not at all park. Shame, shame, shame on SAM for failing to grasp what “park” actually means — and that setting up these “force fields” around art only continues to reinforce the public feeling that art is “elitist.” (And I mean that in the actual sense of the word, not in the contradictory and hypocritical sense of Republican “Obama elitism.”)
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I agree. When I see a nice sculpture in the park, it’s my right to sign my name with a sharpie onto it. And hey, if it’s art in a public space then my kids should be able to climb all over it. Screw the elitist sculpture garden.
Thanks Dylan. I wholeheartedly agree with this. Birds can poop on the art, but we can’t touch it? Also, have you ever read the descriptions from the artists? Ugh.
There’s a happy medium here somewhere. Some sculpture and large art pieces are meant to be tactile. Others are purely visual. (And frankly, if we have to have a ‘no touchy’ rule to avoid the taggers, I’ll live with it.)
I would love to see a part of the Olympic Sculpture Garden given over to an interactive, "please touch this" section similar to the Millenium Park. But not the whole thing.
I came face-to-face with this dilemma last summer but quickly found an acceptable solution.
nephari, you are officially awesome. your certificate’s in the mail.