Sculpting a future City’s public art allocation must be restored By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 3:00 AM CST Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/02/2024 (631 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few months ago, I went to see an airport about a horse.

I’d gone on a trip to Denver and had read about a piece of public art I had to see in person: Blucifer, the Demon Horse of the Denver International Airport.

Blucifer, as the statue is colloquially known, is a 9.8-metre, cast-fibreglass sculpture of a mustang with glowing red LED eyes, located on the median of busy Peña Boulevard, which takes travellers to the terminal.

Although people can’t really get close to him, they cannot miss him, either. Not only is he enormous, he’s painted a vivid shade of cobalt blue. He’s in the rearing position — muscles bulging, veins visible — dramatic and terrifying against the Colorado skyline.

He’s also a killer.

Luis Jiménez, the artist who created the horse — which is actually just titled Mustang — bled to death in 2006 after a piece of the sculpture fell on him and severed an artery in his leg.

To honour Jiménez’s legacy, Mustang was completed and installed posthumously, making its debut at the DIA 16 years ago this week.

In that time, this piece of public art has been loved, loathed, discussed, debated and, of course, nicknamed. Blucifer has served as the basis of conspiracy theories. He has inspired Halloween costumes. He has been called a waste of taxpayer money. But he is firmly ensconced in Denver’s civic identity.

Yes, I’m beginning a column about public art in Winnipeg by highlighting an example of public art elsewhere. To illustrate the magnetism of it, the intrigue of it, the surprise of it, the placemaking power of it — the quality of public art that makes a tourist stressfully and repeatedly remind her extraordinarily patient friend that “the horse is gonna be out of your side of the Uber, so get your phone ready” so she can have a photo of it.

Last week, the City of Winnipeg released its preliminary 2024 budget, revealing no funds would be allocated to the Winnipeg Arts Council’s public art program — a program that has been around since 2004 and whose impact can be seen all over the city.

The annual allocation for public art, until 2018, was $500,000. That was cut in half in 2019 and cut in half again in 2022 and now it’s $0.

I’m trying to imagine what Winnipeg might look like without Kenneth Lavallee’s Square Dancers in Air Canada Park or Ian August’s Rooster Town Kettle on the Southwest Transitway or KC Adams, Jaimie Isaac and Val Vint’s Niimaamaa at the Forks or Bill Pechet’s emptyful in Millennium Library Park.

I’m trying to picture what these pieces might end up looking like if there are no funds to care for them.

I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a city that didn’t have accessible art to stumble upon, to delight and provoke, to draw people to Winnipeg — to visit and to live. I’m trying to imagine how we could call ourselves a cultural capital without supporting artists and designers.

It paints a dismal picture.

Public art is one of the things that gives a city its identity, its character, its heart. It shapes its iconography. It creates jobs. It encourages social interaction and critical thought. It allows people — all people — to be exposed to and interact with art.

No, you usually can’t drive on it, that’s true, but it still has tremendous value.

The proposed budget is still planning on investing in the arts via a new Downtown Arts Capital Program, which will deliver $2 million in funding in $500,000 annual instalments to support “capital projects led by major art organizations and institutions in the downtown.” But that does not necessarily mean the creation, commission and care of public art.

Public art is worth investing in, and restoring the public art program’s former grant of $500,000 would be a vanishingly small amount of money in the context of a civic budget worth billions.

The city clearly values public art in some capacity. On Page 3 of the draft budget — the same budget in which there is $0 for public art — there is Niimaamaa in all her towering, copper, pregnant glory, illustrating the city’s land and water acknowledgment.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com