Public Art & Nonprofits

Getting rid or moving public art no longer wanted-totally or at a particular site—is a problem, but giving it to a nonprofit may be the best solution, as this article from the Huffington Post notes.

An excerpt.

“Back in 1970, Hyland Biological of Costa Mesa, California commissioned sculptor Claire Falkenstein (1908-97) to create a large-scale artwork that was installed outside the front of the building, paying her $20,000. The 18 foot-tall (five-foot wide and deep) metal and glass piece was titled "DNA Molecule," and it greeted visitors for the better part of four decades. A couple of mergers later, the pharmaceutical company (now called Valeant Pharmaceuticals) sold the work to a private collector in 2007 at an auction in San Francisco for $150,250, which exceeded the auction house's estimate of $60,000-80,000. Not a bad return on investment and a pleasant surprise for auctioneer Bonhams & Butterfields.

“Actually, the auction house was stunned. "It took a lot of convincing to get us to take the Falkenstein in the first place," said auctioneer Bonhams & Butterfields Chief Operating Officer Patrick Meade. "It's a very good piece, but how were we supposed to bring it into our auction room? We're not equipped to do this kind of thing." Instead, the auction house took the novel approach of picturing the sculpture in its catalogue but directing prospective bidders to travel to Costa Mesa to see the work in person. (Special Note: The $150,250 price didn't include the cost of disassembling the sculpture, moving it somewhere else and filling in the hole in front of the building.)

“The sale and the price, Meade noted, have resulted in more calls to Bonhams & Butterfields from (California) owners of big, publicly displayed works of art. Consigning to auction houses may be one answer to the question of what to do with public art that its owner no longer wants. With thousands of works of art in public spaces -- sculptures and murals, mostly -- that have been commissioned and installed over the past four decades, the question is likely to come up more and more.

“And, what's wrong with the art that someone wants to get rid of it? Nothing, necessarily. Valeant Pharmaceuticals relocated 25 miles away to Aliso Viejo, selling the building in Costa Mesa and the art in front of it as separate transactions. In another instance, an environmental landscape, or bush sculpture, called "Topo" that artist Maya Lin had been commissioned to create for the City of Charlotte, North Carolina back in 1991, interfered with the plans of an Atlanta-based real estate developer, Pope & Land Enterprises, which bought the land (and the art on it) from the city in 2006. In 2000, when Comerica Bank moved its branch within Detroit's downtown Renaissance Center to a location that could not accommodate the 160-foot long mural by Glen Michaels, which had been commissioned back in 1975, the artwork had to be taken out. A sculptural installation by Stephen Antonakos, "Neon for Southwestern Bell," which had been commissioned by the company in 1984, was in the way of a current improvement project in Dallas' central business district, leading AT&T to want it gone. Advertising giant J. Walter Thompson, which had amassed an 8,000-10,000 art collection between 1965 and 1986, has spent the last 20 years disposing of it, including the three life-size bronze figures at the entrance to the elevators that the company had commissioned Bruno Lucchesi to create in 1966….

“Often, the most advantageous outcomes for both artists and publicly displayed art owners are donations of the objects to nonprofit institutions. AT&T, for instance, had the 34 foot high and 75 foot long Antonakos piece appraised at $90,000 (three times what the artist was paid as a commission), for which it will take a deduction, and the work is expected to be reinstalled on a side of Dallas's convention center. For its part, Comerica had an appraisal of $350,000 for the Glen Michaels mural. In another example, an untitled outdoor sculpture that George Sugarman (1912-99) was commissioned to create in 1987 for the NCNB Plaza in Tampa, Florida for $250,000, was displaced by the demolition of the plaza. However, the plaza's owner, the North Carolina National Bank, is donating the sculpture for a new mixed-use development in Tampa, having received a $1.1 million appraisal for the work.”