is walkway art?
tommyDo you remember this? August 12, 2005 in the St. Pete Times - Sky bridge to add artistic flair downtown:
TAMPA - City Council members on Thursday approved building a sky bridge over Franklin Street between the Tampa Convention Center and the Embassy Suites Hotel now under construction.
But it won’t be just an ordinary sky bridge.
It will be a work of art.
New Orleans artist Mimi Moncier incorporated colored resin circles into the bridge to cast prisms of sunlight across the open-air walkway’s floor.
The city requires developers in Tampa’s central business district to spend 0.75 percent of their project’s cost on public art, up to $200,000. The open-air bridge, accessible from the sidewalk below as well as the two buildings it connects, fulfills the public art requirement for the hotel.
Robin Nigh, who administers the city’s public art program, wouldn’t comment on the aesthetics of the project.
“It meets the definition of public art,” she said.
I’ll let you decide. Take a look below. You can see other photos here: Inside artwork, walking along the bridge, from down below.
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April 30th, 2007 at 9:27 am
My opinion is they should count the additional expense of decorating the bridge, but not the bridge itself. It sounds like a boondoggle if they’re calling the entire bridge art.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:25 pm
I agree with WP, but with reports by NewsChannel 8 like “Artrageous” talking about taxpayers money going to public art (whien it’s typically money from developers), we’ll only get uglier and uglier blurred definitions and projects of “public art”.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Quite frankly, it is not art and I’m really annoyed that my name is associated with it. After hurricane Katrina hit and my husband and I were displaced from New Orleans, I was asked to change my design drastically by the developer, WPM (I’m sure from Robin Nigh was involved), even though it was under budget AND the design had been approved by the city council. I refused to, and basically was taken off the project. I requested in writing that my name not be associated with the it but somehow it is and evidently, I have become a scapegoat for the Public Art Department of Tampa.
I think that bridge is the ugliest thing I have ever seen and would love to know who actually designed it. My suspicion is that it was drawn up by WPM…..
For any who are interested, some of my proposals to WPM are on my website…….