The Arts in New York City

Jonathan Kuhn is the Director of Art and Antiquities for the New York City Parks Department. His job consists of overseeing the permanent and temporary artwork of the Parks Department collection under municipal jurisdiction, which reproduces public art in every park of all five boroughs (except for Central Park). He started working with Parks in 1987, where he was originally hired as Park Historian, and was promoted to his current position in 1995. Jonathan was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, and a graduate student in art history at Columbia University, where he received a broad-based background in art history spanning across all eras with a focus mainly on modern art. Though he had no prior experience in public art or history of parks, his knowledge of New York City combined with his strong passion for art led him to his current position.

C- What does the title “Director of Art and Antiquities” mean, and where did it come from?

J- As mostly temporary public art programming I reproduce art in the parks as well as the arsenal gallery in the headquarters of the Parks Department at Central Park. I also handle a fair amount of historic content.

The Director of Art and Antiquities was a newly coined title but not a new job; it had a “Director of Monuments” or some such title. It was renamed by commissioner Henry Stern.

C- What are some benefits of public, outdoor artwork as opposed to art in a museum?

J- It’s free! What makes parks different than being somewhere else: parks are exceedingly democratic places. They are levelers of society, places where we go to get away from the tensions and pressures of life. The same is true of art within our parks. In that sense it’s an uplifting experience that’s available to the entire citizenry. Our permanent collection – most of the statuary and sculptures— symbolize a value that we as a society uphold.

C- Where do you begin with the process of installing a public piece of art?

J- You’ve got to be responsive in terms of size, material, and impact on the use of the space. You may have a very site-specific piece, such as the sculpture of the composer Antonin Dvorak in Stuyvesant Square Park. Why is it there? Because he lived across the street when he composed the New World Symphony, one of the greatest works ever of classical music.

Or let’s say you have a piece that has no particular direct or literal connection to a location or community. Then you’re still looking at it—how is this space used? Does it have enough physical space to accommodate whatever it is you want to do? What’s its form and color?

And you have maintenance. You’re not going to put a certain kind of sculpture or a landscape in a playground. It’s not an art to place art that will disrupt existing uses of a park. The beauty of the temporary art programming is that it gives us much greater flexibility. You don’t have to do as much consensus building because it’s not going to be there permanently. A typical installation is two-six months, so you can rotate things, give more artists a chance to show. The thing with temporary projects is “Now you see it, now you don’t.” It gives an opportunity without permanently covering the space to share with people a variety of art, given that New York City is a huge cultural capital.

C- When seeking out an artwork, how do you choose between competing artists/works? Does a spot open in a particular place that you need to fill, or do the artists come to you with requests which you then find the most accommodating spot for?

J- Recent years we’ve been getting 125-150 proposals annually, and realizing between 30 and 40 projects.

Permanent art is few and far between. There’s a very high threshold if you’re honoring an individual in a permanent form. It has to be broad-based understanding and reverence for that person across society – if there’s some connection to the city, or to given locale, like Duke Ellington in Harlem.

Whether it’s permanent or temporary, we’re largely responsive. It’s grassroots up rather than top down. We could designate locations. I’ve argued that might be a road to pursue. In Manhattan we reached capacity in density many decades ago. If people don’t have a given sight in mind, there’s a logic to place those in communities that have less art or where there might be a new constituency, because the demographics of the city are always changing.

We are responsive to projects, but you still have to follow certain rules. We try and advance projects that are thoughtful contextually and whether the neighborhood’s going to embrace them. Realize we don’t finance those projects, either temporary or permanent; it’s all paid for through private funds. For instance, you’ll have the committee to erect the “Eleanor Roosevelt Monument,” and they will raise the fund, sponsor the fabrication, the installation, any landscape improvement. It can be a gallery that’s promoting the work of a given artist, a nonprofit organization, or a business improvement district like DUMBO. We’ve done a third of our projects with independent entities who meet all of our thresholds.

They’re responsible for it and we are not. Sometimes people might be concerned that their taxpayer dollars are going to this – well, they’re not.

C- So once you have agreed to an artist’s proposal, how do you go about the process of installing the artwork?

J- We go to community boards with the exhibitor. There’s no legal requirement to do so, but as good community relations we do. We’re going to go to community board and make a presentation: What we’re doing, why, and the duration. Their concerns are possible damage to the park or to the artwork. It’s a given in the license agreement signed by any exhibitor that they’re responsible for all that. They have to insure the artwork and maintain the artwork while in view. They have to insure the public and the city against any claims of personal injury incase somebody hurts themselves.

C- Have you ever installed any controversial art pieces that received negative feedback? If so, did you respond?

J- They’ve had less controversy than one might suppose – it seems that the public has largely accepted the temporary art programming as a given of any great city these days. I have some concern that a lot of public art –that it’s almost deliberately “loud” to get people’s attention, where more contemplative pieces might get lost in a public setting.

Another instance of a controversy, when we knew there would be some, is when Madison Square Park commissioned Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon. There were several dozen sculptures that were steel castings of himself nude. They were placed on top of buildings in the area, on the sidewalk, and in the park. I had to respond to a few letters. Some of them related directly to the nudity of the figures. Our response is that it was no more graphic than the Greco-Roman sculpture hall for the Metropolitan where numerous schoolchildren go.

C- Does New York City have benefits over other cities as far as being a venue for public art?

It surely does. There are many tens of thousands of artists working in our city at any given moment, and other artists from beyond the city and abroad who wish to exhibit here.

And there are certain kinds of projects that we also decline, because it’s New York: “Yea it might look good somewhere else, but it’s not up to our standard.”

We try and avoid repetition. So we spread the projects throughout the city. This is the downside to the private sponsorship in that one of those folks are getting exposure through the artist—that’s why they’re investing large sums into realizing them, so they’re going to gravitate to certain parts of the city that are more dense and visible. It’s harder to get people to invest in other parts of the city in the art programs, but of course we strongly encourage it and we’re always trying to support that endeavor because we’re a five borough agency.