The
Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley is sponsoring the symposium
"ART/CITY" on March 16, 2012. Participants have been invited to respond
to the prompt “in relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am
wrestling with right now is…” in advance of the event. This
guest posting is by Noah Simblist,
Associate Professor of Art at Southern Methodist University.
What is the role of the university in a city? Are we, as an
institution, cultural producers providing the city with content such as
exhibitions, lectures, or public projects? Are we organizers, facilitators or
interpreters of civic life? Or is our primary role to train students to be
cultural practitioners that can either act as cultural workers in our city or
elsewhere? This last question can often become a significant choice between
encouraging students to stay and act locally within Dallas or to travel to
major global cultural centers such as New York, Los Angeles, London or Berlin.
Right now both Dallas and my institution, Southern Methodist
University are at a particular crossroads in terms of these questions. Hundreds
of millions of dollars have been invested in an arts district populated by
buildings designed by blue chip international architects such as Renzo Piano,
Norman Foster, and OMA. Next to these buildings is a new city park that is
being built on top of a highway to add green space to the area. In addition,
The Trinity Trust project seeks to redevelop the long neglected waterway that
runs next to the heart of downtown Dallas into a major public park. A Santiago Calatrava
designed bridge, which connects the arts district, park, and waterway with a
neighborhood called West Dallas is about to open.
With this as a backdrop, SMU invited Creative Time to spend
a year in 2010 to study the cultural landscape in Dallas, essentially to see as
outsiders what the relationship between the arts and civic life looked like. At
the end of this process, Creative Time produced a report that was published in
an online forum of D magazine: http://frontrow.dmagazine.com/2011/02/building-a-thriving-artistic-community/.
In addition to the report, SMU worked with Creative Time to address some of the
most pressing issues coming out of the ambitious civic projects mentioned above
through a conference in 2011 entitled The Freedom of the City: Models of Urban
Engagement & Creativity in the 21st Century.
Toward the end of Creative Time’s visit, SMU had been
approached by developers that owned a good deal of property in West Dallas to
rent from them. They wanted us to build a presence of artists in the
neighborhood through exhibitions or performances. After some discussion with
Creative Time, we decided that rather than export artists from our campus to West
Dallas, we should engage community organizers in the area to see what they
wanted and needed. As a result, this past year, we sponsored an artist in
residence to engage two community centers together with some of our students
through social practice classes.
We are also hiring a new position, an Assistant Professor of
Art and Urbanism to begin working with our students to address this radically
shifting local landscape within the global context. Through this search it has
been interesting to note that artists have addressed these issues from multiple
backgrounds in architecture, urbanism, social practice, documentary film and
photography, alternative publications, and experimental music. So, something at
the forefront of our minds right now is, what is the best model for us to use
for our students and our city?
Some helpful links:
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