On June 13, an issue will come up for a vote at the Chicago City Council meeting that will affect public participation in meetings about public art.
In mid-May at the request of the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs (Lois Weisberg), Mayor Daley proposed an ordinance to revamp the Public Art Program. Unfortunately, this proposed ordinance is bad government: bad for Chicagoans and particularly bad for the Chicago art community. In essence it wipes out public participation in the selection of public art. This is outrageous, and will not be tolerated by the local art community.
Mayor Daley and the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) have proposed an ordinance to modify the Public Art Program. Their stated reason makes no sense: that the open meetings were cumbersome and unnecessary. That the previous ordinance existed for 25 years and that the City has an exemplary art collection in part because of these open meetings they deemed irrelevant.
