Cows to the Slaughter
After years of neglect and mismanagement, the quality of Boston’s public art can be summed up in a single word: moo.
- Illustration by Oksana Badrak.
Art is about breaking down barriers. It gets people to feel, to think, to react. —Peter Hanig, organizer, CowParade
When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity. —Napoleon Bonaparte
Later this fall, Boston’s shining new ICA building will finally open its doors to the public, with all the fanfare you’d expect from a city that hasn’t had a new museum in almost a century. “This,” ICA program director David Henry has said, “will elevate us to the level of San Francisco, Chicago, New York.” So what did Boston do to usher in this wonderful new era? It pulled out all the stops and installed a citywide exhibition of
…fiberglass cows.
The CowParade is on its way out—they’re going in for refurbishments in the lead-up to a charity auction later this month. And though I’ll miss the perverse satisfaction of walking past Emack & Bolio’s on Newbury Street and seeing herds of tourists gyrate hysterically against a fiberglass animal with a guitar painted on it, the City of Boston and all who live in it need to pledge to never let this happen again. Because those cows demeaned us all.
There are many reasons to hate the cows. Here’s one: They’ve been done before, more than 40 times, in such cultural juggernauts as West Hartford. Also, they have nothing to do with Boston, despite the strained efforts of the promo copy to establish a link (“Returning to its historical and pastoral roots…Boston’s parks, plazas and streets will be filled with life-size cows,” as though we’ve been stuck with only non-life-size cows since the Revolutionary days). The worst thing, though, is that the miserable bovines were not an aberration. They were just the latest in a long line of mediocrities and outright horrors that pass for public art in this city.
Examples are everywhere. Take any of the detritus on or near City Hall Plaza, from the mangled Thermopylae, which appears to be something a huge iron cat coughed up, to the four rows of bleak cement benches that look more like a Holocaust memorial than the actual Holocaust Memorial, which itself bears a disturbing resemblance to a nearby Big Dig exhaust chimney. Stroll over to the State House and behold the JFK statue that looks like it really has to go to the bathroom, then swing over to the corner of Washington and School for the Irish Famine Memorial, the first sculpture to successfully mine the famine for laughs (“Woe is us, for we are hungry!”). After that, hit Bad Statuary Row on the Comm. Ave. Mall and have a look at the Vendome Hotel Memorial, which consists of elements cribbed from better-known memorials (the granite wall, the trompe l’oeil bronzed fireman’s jacket, the, uh, bench). Keep walking and you’ll find the Samuel Eliot Morison statue, which evokes a Lands’ End catalog, and the Boston Women’s Memorial, which—well, where to begin? Abigail Adams looks like Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies. Lucy Stone looks like a morphine addict. Phillis Wheatley just looks bored.
The list is stunning in its awfulness, and the worst offenders were all produced in the past 50 years. That’s not to say we haven’t had some successes in the postwar era (the Faneuil Hall statues of James Michael Curley and Red Auerbach, both by Lloyd Lillie, clearly rule), but the fiascoes have built a pretty good lead for themselves.
The way Boston approaches its public art seems designed to guarantee a steady stream of crud. Our city’s one of the few without a percent-for-art program, whereby a portion of construction budgets for work on publicly owned land is dedicated to support the arts. Last year, City Councilor Mike Ross proposed a system in which a paltry one percent of major private construction fees—up to a certain cap—would go toward public art, but the plan drew the ire of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, a gang of bureaucratic philistines straight out of central casting, and has been languishing on the mayor’s desk ever since.
Meanwhile, the underfunded Boston Art Commission, the quasi-independent
body charged with overseeing public art in the city, is so anemic that its decisions have often been placed in the hands of powerful private groups—the Famine Memorial, for one, was pushed through by renowned strip mall developer Thomas Flatley. Even if the city did decide to funnel money to the arts, its options are limited. The mayor can’t impose taxes on meals or hotels—as other cities do to raise funds for the arts—without the legislature’s approval. In other words, Moo.
Our latest debacle—spearheaded by City Hall, CowParade Holdings, and its beneficiary, the Jimmy Fund—is characteristic of a city government that’s just run out of good ideas. We got the cows because they were the easiest, safest choice for a public art program. The artists chosen to decorate the cattle faced a set of restrictions designed to crib-strangle any genuine artistic impulse. Anything that addressed religion, sex, or politics: verboten. The cows were mediocre by design, offensive in their inoffensiveness.
In the interest of restoring our battered civic pride, I’ve assembled some ideas for our next public art initiative. In my CowParade, there will be no cows (or big, stupid cod, as in 2000). Instead, my parade will consist of statues that have an actual bearing on Boston: Mayor Menino, Mitt Romney, Cardinal O’Malley. Each of these will be approximately 12 feet tall, and will be decorated according to the whim of local artists. If this flies, I’ll install a number of colorful 3-ton fiberglass slabs, to be duct-taped above several heavily trafficked spots around the city.
My parade won’t ban political expression, though it will forbid shrieky protest art (e.g., Romney with fangs and HOMOPHOBE spray-painted across his chest). Instead, we’d have something far more subversive. A Menino statue adorned head to toe with sunflowers and bumblebees in South Station; an O’Malley covered with glitter and unicorn stickers on Boylston Street. Artist Kathryn Field did a Trojan Cow this year, so why not commission her to do a Trojan Romney? Or maybe a giant American-flag Romney, or a Romney covered with glue and dog hair.
These things would be everywhere. Artists would love them, children would love them, and we’d get global press for them. There’d be some arguments, feelings may be hurt, maybe even a few lawsuits filed, but that’s what art’s for. It would be funny, provocative, and bowel-twistingly scary all at the same time, and it would help re-establish this city as a cultural force to be reckoned with.
As with the CowParade, my statues would eventually be auctioned off for charity. Ideally the money would go toward funding the arts, but frankly I’m a little wary of going the obvious route and giving it to the Boston Art Commission. I can’t say for sure why, but I keep getting these visions in my head of another Famine Memorial, identical to the old one, only about 20 times taller, casting its grim shadow of hilarity over the entire downtown area.
When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity. —Napoleon Bonaparte
Later this fall, Boston’s shining new ICA building will finally open its doors to the public, with all the fanfare you’d expect from a city that hasn’t had a new museum in almost a century. “This,” ICA program director David Henry has said, “will elevate us to the level of San Francisco, Chicago, New York.” So what did Boston do to usher in this wonderful new era? It pulled out all the stops and installed a citywide exhibition of
…fiberglass cows.
The CowParade is on its way out—they’re going in for refurbishments in the lead-up to a charity auction later this month. And though I’ll miss the perverse satisfaction of walking past Emack & Bolio’s on Newbury Street and seeing herds of tourists gyrate hysterically against a fiberglass animal with a guitar painted on it, the City of Boston and all who live in it need to pledge to never let this happen again. Because those cows demeaned us all.
There are many reasons to hate the cows. Here’s one: They’ve been done before, more than 40 times, in such cultural juggernauts as West Hartford. Also, they have nothing to do with Boston, despite the strained efforts of the promo copy to establish a link (“Returning to its historical and pastoral roots…Boston’s parks, plazas and streets will be filled with life-size cows,” as though we’ve been stuck with only non-life-size cows since the Revolutionary days). The worst thing, though, is that the miserable bovines were not an aberration. They were just the latest in a long line of mediocrities and outright horrors that pass for public art in this city.
Examples are everywhere. Take any of the detritus on or near City Hall Plaza, from the mangled Thermopylae, which appears to be something a huge iron cat coughed up, to the four rows of bleak cement benches that look more like a Holocaust memorial than the actual Holocaust Memorial, which itself bears a disturbing resemblance to a nearby Big Dig exhaust chimney. Stroll over to the State House and behold the JFK statue that looks like it really has to go to the bathroom, then swing over to the corner of Washington and School for the Irish Famine Memorial, the first sculpture to successfully mine the famine for laughs (“Woe is us, for we are hungry!”). After that, hit Bad Statuary Row on the Comm. Ave. Mall and have a look at the Vendome Hotel Memorial, which consists of elements cribbed from better-known memorials (the granite wall, the trompe l’oeil bronzed fireman’s jacket, the, uh, bench). Keep walking and you’ll find the Samuel Eliot Morison statue, which evokes a Lands’ End catalog, and the Boston Women’s Memorial, which—well, where to begin? Abigail Adams looks like Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies. Lucy Stone looks like a morphine addict. Phillis Wheatley just looks bored.
The list is stunning in its awfulness, and the worst offenders were all produced in the past 50 years. That’s not to say we haven’t had some successes in the postwar era (the Faneuil Hall statues of James Michael Curley and Red Auerbach, both by Lloyd Lillie, clearly rule), but the fiascoes have built a pretty good lead for themselves.
The way Boston approaches its public art seems designed to guarantee a steady stream of crud. Our city’s one of the few without a percent-for-art program, whereby a portion of construction budgets for work on publicly owned land is dedicated to support the arts. Last year, City Councilor Mike Ross proposed a system in which a paltry one percent of major private construction fees—up to a certain cap—would go toward public art, but the plan drew the ire of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, a gang of bureaucratic philistines straight out of central casting, and has been languishing on the mayor’s desk ever since.
Meanwhile, the underfunded Boston Art Commission, the quasi-independent
body charged with overseeing public art in the city, is so anemic that its decisions have often been placed in the hands of powerful private groups—the Famine Memorial, for one, was pushed through by renowned strip mall developer Thomas Flatley. Even if the city did decide to funnel money to the arts, its options are limited. The mayor can’t impose taxes on meals or hotels—as other cities do to raise funds for the arts—without the legislature’s approval. In other words, Moo.
Our latest debacle—spearheaded by City Hall, CowParade Holdings, and its beneficiary, the Jimmy Fund—is characteristic of a city government that’s just run out of good ideas. We got the cows because they were the easiest, safest choice for a public art program. The artists chosen to decorate the cattle faced a set of restrictions designed to crib-strangle any genuine artistic impulse. Anything that addressed religion, sex, or politics: verboten. The cows were mediocre by design, offensive in their inoffensiveness.
In the interest of restoring our battered civic pride, I’ve assembled some ideas for our next public art initiative. In my CowParade, there will be no cows (or big, stupid cod, as in 2000). Instead, my parade will consist of statues that have an actual bearing on Boston: Mayor Menino, Mitt Romney, Cardinal O’Malley. Each of these will be approximately 12 feet tall, and will be decorated according to the whim of local artists. If this flies, I’ll install a number of colorful 3-ton fiberglass slabs, to be duct-taped above several heavily trafficked spots around the city.
My parade won’t ban political expression, though it will forbid shrieky protest art (e.g., Romney with fangs and HOMOPHOBE spray-painted across his chest). Instead, we’d have something far more subversive. A Menino statue adorned head to toe with sunflowers and bumblebees in South Station; an O’Malley covered with glitter and unicorn stickers on Boylston Street. Artist Kathryn Field did a Trojan Cow this year, so why not commission her to do a Trojan Romney? Or maybe a giant American-flag Romney, or a Romney covered with glue and dog hair.
These things would be everywhere. Artists would love them, children would love them, and we’d get global press for them. There’d be some arguments, feelings may be hurt, maybe even a few lawsuits filed, but that’s what art’s for. It would be funny, provocative, and bowel-twistingly scary all at the same time, and it would help re-establish this city as a cultural force to be reckoned with.
As with the CowParade, my statues would eventually be auctioned off for charity. Ideally the money would go toward funding the arts, but frankly I’m a little wary of going the obvious route and giving it to the Boston Art Commission. I can’t say for sure why, but I keep getting these visions in my head of another Famine Memorial, identical to the old one, only about 20 times taller, casting its grim shadow of hilarity over the entire downtown area.
Originally published in Boston magazine, September 2006
