After much debate, City Council OKs purchase of sculptures for Old Town, downtown
After a sometimes contentious debate on Tuesday, the Wichita City Council voted 6-1 to approve the purchase of 13 sculptures that will be installed on empty art pedestals in Old Town and downtown Wichita.
The pieces were chosen by a 10-person selection committee, which met last summer to narrow down 234 submissions from artists around the country who had responded to an open call. The project was approved last year by Wichita’s Design Council, an advisory board tasked with selecting public art. The council’s members are appointed by the mayor.
The lone nay vote in approving the purchase Tuesday was the mayor.
In September, a selection committee recommended 13 finalists, said Jana Erwin, the city’s public art manager, who, along with the city’s art director, Lindsay Benacka, presented the item to the council. The Design Council approved those finalists.
Eight of the approved pieces were submitted by Kansas artists, including Wichita’s John Ernatt, Armando Minjarez, Eric Schmidt, Marc Durfee and Chris Brunner. The other five were from national artists.
The pieces range from a 9.5-foot-tall sheet metal sculpture of a flower in bloom to a 4.5-foot-tall bronze statue of stacked vintage suitcases. They range in price from $8,000 to $15,500 each.
The purchase will cost the city $200,000. The city was able to secure an additional $50,000 in state and federal grants for the project. Of the total, $169,000 will go toward purchasing the sculptures and the additional $81,000 will go toward things like pedestal restoration and sculpture installation.
Wu said at the meeting that she was one of 10 people asked to serve on the selection committee but that she left the process concerned that the pieces chosen didn’t adhere to a theme. She repeatedly indicated that a theme she’d put forward was America’s 250th birthday, which will land on July 4 of this year.
Early in the discussion on Tuesday, Wu advocated that the council should, instead of approving the money to purchase all 13 sculptures, vote on whether to approve each piece individually.
“I also was very concerned knowing that . . . there was just an open call with no theme,” she said. “So we received 200-plus submissions all over the place. And even right now, the 13 various items — and art is in the eye of the beholder — and there are certain pieces I like and certain pieces I don’t like.”
Wu’s idea, though, was not popular with the other members of the City Council, who took turns expressing their reservations.
Becky Tuttle spoke first, saying she had deep concerns about the idea of addressing each sculpture individually, as such a move could be insulting to the artists who were chosen, to the selection committee who chose the art, and to members of the Design Council. The City Council should trust the people who were appointed to select the public art, she said.
“I think it’s opening a Pandora’s Box, not just for projects such as this but across everything we do,” she said. “We went through the process. If we don’t like the process, we should change the process. But this was presented to us as an item, and I think we should address it as an item.”
Council member Joseph Shepard echoed Tuttle and said that the lack of a uniform theme actually fostered diversity in the artwork, adding that he was choosing to trust the Design Council to do its job.
“I don’t believe that public policy and protocol and process should be dictated by personal preference,” he said.
The discussion continued for nearly an hour and included commentary from three members of the selection committee, including Bill Gardner of Gardner Design and Ross DeVore of DeVore & Sons.
DeVore told the council that he would describe the collection of sculptures as eclectic.
“These pieces are interesting,” he said. “They’re talk-aboutable. I didn’t like all of them. But that’s not really the point.”
Toward the end of the debate, council member Dalton Glasscock said that, though he initially thought he’d support Wu’s push to vote on the pieces individually, the speakers changed his mind.
Wu later clarified her comments, saying that her main concern was that members of the public didn’t get a chance to weigh in on the 13 art pieces that were selected. She said she’d been cognizant of multiple complaints from people who disliked the three pieces of public art chosen for the behind-schedule water treatment plant, including a 37-foot-tall twisty aluminum sculpture, and wished they’d had a say in the purchases, which totaled $1.25 million.
Shepard came back at Wu, saying that the council needed to stop harping on the art at the water treatment plant because the issue was settled long ago.
“We continue to talk about the art at the water treatment,” he said. “ I think the public at this point is more concerned about what’s happening with our water treatment plant.”
Council member J.V. Johnston also said he was in favor of approving the money for the new sculptures but suggested that the council discuss whether appointees to the Design Council should be chosen only by the mayor.
“I also find it ironic that the mayor appointed everyone to the council, and she’s going to vote against it,” he said. “I don’t understand it, but okay.”
The pedestals were filled from 2008 until 2013 by pieces that were part of the Wichita Arts Council’s Sculpture Walkabout Program. The statues were removed when the council, citing lack of funding, ended the program.
Benacka said that her department hoped to have the new sculptures installed on their pedestals by late 2026 or early 2027. Organizers had not yet decided which sculptures will go on which pedestals, she said.
Last February, the Wichita City Council approved $200,000 in funding for the artworks and their maintenance through the city’s Percent for Art program.
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