9:25am | The Executive Committee of the Arts Council for Long Beach (ACLB) voted to continue its public art program even as supporting funds from the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) ended on September 30, 2011.
“The Arts Council Board is committed to continuing our partnership with Mayor Foster, the City Council, RDA and all of our community partners,” said Kamran Assadi, Council Board President, “to seek a sustainable funding solution for maintaining and expanding public art in Long Beach. Over the next thirty days, we plan on presenting to the city a more detailed proposal for accomplishing this goal.”
The Long Beach Public Art Program is managed through the Arts Council’s Department of Public Art and Design and is responsible for cultural infrastructure, temporary and permanent public art and visual arts planning through a number of programs and community partnerships. Since 1989, the department has partnered with the Long Beach RDA to manage the Percent for Public Art policy and program in order to integrate public art into the fabric of the City. The department also implements educational programming related to public art practice and works to foster a dialogue about art and urban design issues through professional development workshops and symposiums.
Public art funding is needed to support management and conservation of the City of Long Beach’s public art collection, to administer the review and approval of developer art plans, to create cultural facilities and to commission artists for new temporary and permanent artworks sited within the public sphere.
The Long Beach Public Art Program is a partnership with RDA, Parks and Recreation, ACLB, Long Beach Transit and many others in the professional artist’s community. The Create Long Beach: Action Plan for a More Creative City 2010-2020 summed it up this way, “The arts are not ‘extras’ – they are part of the human existence and they matter.”
Disclosure: Long Beach Post publisher Shaun Lumachi is an ACLB executive committee member.