Dear George:

The larger problem embedded within the public art debate is the quality of the contemporary visual arts in Charlottesville. Many educated newcomers here, after taking a cultural look about them, are puzzled by a state of affairs many locals take for granted: to wit, in a town which justifiably prides itself on the exemplary quality of its literature, drama, and music, why is that same town's visual art so crummy? In fact, the local "art crawls" are for the most part a sad, bad joke, because the vast majority of the publicly exhibited painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture should not be hanging in public at all -- anywhere. It simply isn't good enough. It is poorly conceived, poorly designed, and, in the end, poorly produced. Moreover, most of it is flat, stale, washed-out, dried-out, and otherwise inexcusably boring. And one major irony is that much of this dreck comes from people and associations who keep preaching to us about how "exciting" art should and must be, how innovative, how "risk-taking," how daring, and all the rest of it -- all the while their own work too often provides, collectively and individually, a lamentable counter-example. Many knowledgeable people here know about this state of affairs and talk about it in polite, diplomatic whispers. An infamously polite and diplomatic person myself, I nonetheless believe it should be 'fessed up to more honestly and discussed more openly.

From this larger problem involving the local visual arts, the lesser problem of public funding for the arts here (whether patriotic or not) emerges. Many of us who would otherwise support such funding simply don't want to see all this dull, badly made junk before our eyes all the time -- particularly when the fact that we are PAYING for it strikes us as nothing but salt in the wound. The artistically unadorned visual horrors of 29-North, for example, are actually preferable, aesthetically, to the kitschy ornamentation thrown up (no pun actually intended) in such public spaces by the usual array of financially self-interested "artists" and "arts groups" (who are legion not just here, but seemingly everywhere). They want to trade us bad art for our tax dollars. We should respond with a loud "No!" to the elected public officials here who have the power to tell them to make it a hell of a lot better before any checks start getting cut -- with such "betterness" to be decided by a blend of credentialed referees from here or elsewhere and representatives of our own general public.

Leo Daugherty (electronic mail, February 13, 2002)