What an Art Prize in Michigan Can Teach Us About Building Better Cities

More awesome news from Grand Rapids. They are really trying to change the face of Michigan in the eyes of the U.S. and the world. Even though they aren’t the biggest city in the state, my hometown is definitely turning heads and making some noise. The DeVos family especially has really made a big positive impact on the city and continues to give everyone there a hopeful look to the future.

As cities, institutions, non- profits and artist view this critical period in our economic history it is more important that ever that the language we use and the rapidly evolving ideas that language describe actually mean something.

Carol Coletta’s post “What an Art Prize in Michigan Can Teach Us About Building Better Cities” seems filled with inaccuracies and exaggerated statements.

Rick Devos is by no means “reinventing the rules of art”. He admits he isn’t even an Artist. What he has done is created a controversial means of running a Art competition where anyone, whether they have any knowledge about Art or not is the judge and jury about what is good Art.

Colletta is misinformed when she says that ArtPrize “ allows any artists to enter” and that “ no curators were involved. To be able to exhibit in ArtPrize an Artists first had to apply to a venue. The venue then juried the applicants, selecting the ones they wanted to have exhibit. Some venues employed professional curators to cull the applicants other venues simply picked who they liked whether they had any experience in curating or not.

ArtPrize was not a co-op venture. It wasn’t a community organized “platform” as Colletta suggests. It was an event designed, organized, funded and run by Devos to support a idea that was in fact a referendum against the idea that the profession of Art has experts. Betsy Devos, who funded the prize, even went as far to say that Art viewing, should become more “democratic”. Artprize seems to contend that Art should be returned to a populistic form of entertainment where Joe the Plumbers opinion counts as much as a Museum Directors. Why then not have the public pick the books your local library should stock? Why not have the public pick next years Nobel Prize winners? We don’t do that because you have to know what your talking about when you are going to judge the Nobel Prize in Literature. Art isn’t any different.

Filling the streets of downtown Grand Rapids with people texting their votes isn’t the same type of success as creating a International Art Competition that draws serious, major artists from around the world. No one could say that ArtPrize did that this year.
Now, days before the top prize is awarded serious discussions abound that the quality was,in fact, poor. Were there some great entries? Absolutely, but the serious Art World stayed away from this American Idol type competition.

As a professional Artists I depend and count on “the middle”, my galleries and dealers to make my living. I don’t want them to “become obsolete” as Coletta supports. I depended on them not because I have a arcane idea of business but because I use them to grow and expand.

The Art World doesn’t need the ArtPrize model to “give people(artists) permission to be entrepreneurial”. We already are and Artists, Galleries, Museums work hard and diligently each and every day to involve the public and be relevant. Colletta’s suggestion that we now have ArtPrize to thank for that is simply not true.

Richard,I agree with you that some of Ms. Coletta’s claims about Art Prize’s role in the art world are exaggerated, that artists are already entrepreneurial, and that museums and curators still have important roles in the art community.  But I do think there are major benefits to artists in populist competitions such as this; why should art be enjoyed exclusively by esoteric connoisseurs?I can imagine the “serious art world” would be cynical of this competition in its first year, but I think over time it will come around and the quality of art will get better.  An artist that enters a piece for Art Prize will be seen by 25,000-30,000 people in two weeks. Wouldn’t an artist want that kind of exposure?  I would estimate that most of these viewers likely hadn’t visited the GR Art Museum or Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts before now, either.  Don’t artists want to reach out to new audiences?  I know of several entries that will become permanent fixtures, and others that will be purchased by private citizens after the contest is over.  Is that bad?And don’t forget the fact that each piece of art is part of an urban experiment in which a midwestern city’s landscape is transformed for those 2 weeks.  Blighted, abandoned buildings have been reborn anew, if only temporarily.  The visual spectacle of urban transformation is as much a part of the event as the art itself.This, I believe, was the crux of Rick DeVos’ motives in founding this competition; I think you misunderstand him when you say this competition was intended as a referendum against art experts.  Instead, he wanted to create an event that would not only spark cultural interest, but the GR community would also get behind, which it did beyond all expectation.Also remember that Ms. Coletta is an urban scholar, and is speaking from the perspective of how Art Prize helps the city, as opposed to the art world.

regaltdp,Interesting points. Let me comment on them.First off, I don’t believe that  artists entered Artprize to help Grand Rapids as a city or to fight urban decay or to help the hotel and restaurant business. What they did enter was just what was advertised, “the largest art competition in the world”. A doctors convention, International Floral Show or an Auto Show may have all kinds of good ancillary effects for the host city but it’s not the reason the event takes place. Art may be a lot of things to the public; entertainment, therapy, civic interaction, but those aren’t usually the reasons Artists make Art. What I’m trying to say is that Art shouldn’t serve anything. And Art shouldn’t always be used as the side show attraction for another cause.The business of Art is a complicated business. Most Art isn’t sold like toothpaste or Diet Coke. You don’t see BMW setting up a display of cars at a country square dance. The demographics are wrong. Exposing your Art to 30,000 people doesn’t mean diddle if its not the right kind of exposure.  You and I can only assume Rick Devos’s motives are what he and his parents foundation have said they are. He constructed a Art Competition where professional knowledge was replaced by populist opinion. I would agree with you when you say that it “sparked cultural interest”. What I would argue with is just which “culture” was sparked. ArtPrize was advertised as a International Art Competition. That didn’t happen. And for that to happen there needs to be some ideological changes made. Otherwise it will just remain a local event. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it’s not what I think was intended.I’m not arguing that something did in fact happen in Grand Rapids. I’m disagreeing with Ms. Colletta’s assessment of what actually did happen.