The Public Arts Committee met 10/06/2021. The purpose of the meeting was to determine a selection process for filling the Houdini Plaza Welcome Tower.
At the previous meeting the committee had decided to hold a photo contest with the theme of “Diversity”, but since that meeting the Rhythms of the World’s event had been held. Back in 2020, the committee had planned to use photos from the Rhythms of the World event to fill the tower, but issues related to the pandemic got in the way and the held the “Hope” themed photo contest instead. This year, the Rhythms of the World event was held and they hired a professional photographer to document the event, so using pictures from that in the tower had become a viable option.
Balakuntalam Sridhar appeared on behalf of Rhythms of the World. His microphone did not pick him up very well, but from what I could gather, the photographer they hired took both staged photos and candid photos of the event. He was able to show the staged photos to the committee, but, due to some kind of technical issues, he was not able to show any of the candid photos.
The committee discussed various considerations related to filling the Welcome Tower. They really liked the photos they had seen, but one committee member specifically felt that they almost looked like stock photographs. There was a general desire to have pictures that demonstrated diversity within Appleton specifically.
The committee was also concerned that the proposed language of the photo contest was too broad. They wanted something focused on people and not objects, even though objects could also demonstrate culture and diversity.
The question was also raised as to what kind of diversity they wanted to demonstrate—racial and cultural diversity or a broader diversity of not only race but also physical ability, age, and gender. They did not want to make the rules of the potential photo contest too restrictive but they did want to have the focus be on people.
Because they could not see any of the candid photos that had been taken at the Rhythms of the World event, the committee did not feel that they had enough information to decide on the direction they wanted to go with filling the tower. They voted to hold the item until the next meeting with the intention of city staff gathering those candid photos and also creating new contest language based on the committee’s discussion that day.
At their next meeting, they planned to definitely decide whether they wanted to fill the tower fully with Rhythms of the World photos, fully with photo contest pictures, or half with event pictures and half with contest pictures. This third option was raised out of concern that the pictures from the event would potentially all be too similar in appearance to be visually interesting and that it might make more aesthetic sense to intersperse those photos with pictures drawn from a wider range of community members.
So, if you want you can start going through your camera rolls now picking out pictures that you think might be suitable contest candidates, but we won’t know for certain in what direction the committee will go until their next meeting.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=892347&GUID=0AAF2B91-38EE-466D-9912-669E4D00240C
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