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Waterjets cooling on fountain idea for 150-year celebration
Conflict perceived between public
and private interests
Kansas City Star
August 15, 1999
Alice Thorson
Plans for a $2.5 million Union Station fountain/sculpture designed by a major contemporary artist appear to be fizzling, despite support from a panel of local art experts involved since February in selecting an artist.
The fountain was to be on the Pershing Road median, which is public land, and was to be paid for with private funds. The goal was to complete it in time for the city's sesquicentennial celebrations next summer.
After reviewing proposals from five invited artists, the panel last month narrowed its recommendations to two designs, one by internationally acclaimed sculptor Jonathan Borofsky, who has placed notable public artworks in Berlin, Tokyo and Los Angeles; and one by Boston-based landscape architect Martha Schwartz, known for her whimsical and ingenious solutions to problem sites.
Union Station principals and community volunteers who reviewed the plans were enthusiastic, but the designs have sparked little interest from potential funders, according to John Laney, vice president of the Hall Family Foundation.
Laney is a member of the Union Station project development committee, one of several entities that must approve a fountain design.
"Those two proposals are being shopped around to funders, and I must say we're not getting an overwhelming interest," Laney said recently. "I would predict that we will not be able to find the interest."
The Hall Family Foundation, best known in art circles for its support of the Kansas City Sculpture Park at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, had put itself forward as a potential funder of the project when discussions about a "Sesquicentennial Fountain" began in spring 1998.
The Borofsky proposal calls for an 84-foot-high metal-and-fiberglass figure, composed of painted white spheres representing molecules and positioned astride a 50-foot-diameter fountain with enormous jets of water.
Schwartz proposed a 70-foot-high metal column topped by a horizontally positioned revolving ring. The ring would emit mist and a gentle cascade of water that would fall in a helix pattern and be animated by lights.
Laney said funders shied from both proposals because they feared that such enormous fountains would spray passing cars and pedestrians. He said funders also were concerned by "the intimidating scale of the works in juxtaposition to Union Station and the Liberty Memorial" and worried that the work might compete with Union Station.
If funding is not forthcoming or if no other opportunity presents itself, Laney said, the fountain idea will be dropped and the median will be landscaped in accordance with the original Union Station development plan.
Bruce Hartman, director of the Gallery of Art at Johnson County Community College and a member of the arts advisory committee that helped select Borofsky and Schwartz, would be sorry to see the project abandoned.
"It's a great opportunity to extend Kansas City's reputation as a center for contemporary sculpture and fountains," Hartman said.
"It would be a shame, after receiving outstanding proposals by internationally recognized artists, to now be faced with simply having paving brick and grass in the median, rather than a spectacular fountain/sculpture."
Hartman said that both artists were willing to work with funders "to realize this important project. Borofsky certainly has indicated his willingness to reduce the scale of his piece; Schwartz has a long history of working collaboratively with civic entities to come up with mutually acceptable solutions."
The Oldenburg and van Bruggen "Shuttlecocks" and the Bartle Hall "Sky Stations" generated similar concerns when they were proposed but, Hartman said, "they have become symbols of the city's revitalization and generated international publicity."
Andy Scott, executive director of the Union Station Assistance Corp. and a member of the project development committee, has been involved in the effort to realize a Union Station fountain for more than a year.
"I continue to be optimistic that some sort of a solution will be forthcoming and that the wait will have been worthwhile," Scott said.
Public land, public process The Borofsky and Schwartz proposals would not be the first designs for a sesquicentennial fountain to go down in flames. An earlier effort to commission a fountain/sculpture was scuttled principally because it was conducted behind closed doors.
That effort began in March 1998 and was steered by a small group involved in the station capital campaign, including Bob Reeds, president of the City of Fountains Foundation; Vic Poirier, assistant to the chairman, Kansas City Power & Light; and Laney.
Drue Jennings, CEO of KCP&L, and Bill Hall, president of the Hall Family Foundation, also supported a Union Station fountain and spearheaded the fund-raising effort.
Hoping to have a fountain in place by the time of the station's November 1999 opening, the group asked the project team led by Andy Scott to find a designer who could do the job within the allotted time.
Scott invited New York artist Robert Morris (creator of the "Bull Wall" at the American Royal) to create a fountain proposal for Union Station and paid him $15,000 from a $35,000 fund for design work contributed by Hallmark and KCP&L. Morris, in collaboration with Wet Design, a Los Angeles-based water-feature design firm, came up with a preliminary concept. But the proposal was tabled when members of various public bodies who had not been consulted heard about it.
Bi-State Commissioner Karen Holland, who said she learned of the project through phone calls from art-world contacts, was among those who protested to Scott about the arrangement with Morris.
"I just sort of said, 'Look. You can't do it this way. You have to be open; it has to be a public process,' " Holland said.
Holland, who is also vice chairman of the Missouri Arts Council, worried that even though funds from the bi-state tax were not involved, the public would nevertheless perceive the fountain as part of the Union Station project.
When Sheila Kemper Dietrich, then a member of the Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners, heard about the Morris proposal, she voiced similar concerns.
"I think we're wanting to have a public process," Dietrich said, "because it is on public land."
A meeting was called in November 1998 attended by members of the various entities involved and the Kansas City Design Center, an organization of architecture and design professionals and educators dedicated to raising local awareness of design issues.
The Design Center helped the group establish a set of nine criteria for the fountain sculpture, including compatibility with the neighborhood and its attractions.
"It was that misfire that caused us to say, 'We need to do this in an invited competition,' " Poirier said. "It became pretty obvious there are so many entities that had interests that if we were going to do this, we needed the cooperation of a whole bunch of entities."
Architect Wayne Feuerborn of Gould, Evans, Goodman Associates and the Kansas City Design Center was enlisted to oversee the process of artist selection with input from three panels: A stakeholders committee with representatives from the Parks Board, the City of Fountains Foundation, the Historic Kansas City Foundation, Science City and the Municipal Arts Commission, among others.
A project development committee, made up of Bob Reeds, Vic Poirier, John Laney and Andy Scott.
An arts advisory committee of five area arts professionals: Bruce Hartman; Pat Jordan, director of the Gem Theater; Dana Self, curator of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Raechell Smith, director of the H&R Bloch Artspace at Kansas City Art Institute; and Craig Subler, director of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Gallery of Art.
The arts advisory group took the lead in assembling a list of artists to be considered. From a list of 20 candidates, the committee in March narrowed the field to five: Siah Armajani, Jonathan Borofsky, Robert Morris, Tom Otterness and Martha Schwartz.
In April the project development committee added the name of Alvin Holm, a Philadelphia-based artist who specializes in 19th-century-style public monuments, to the list compiled by the art experts.
In mid-July the arts panel reviewed proposals by Borofsky, Morris/Wet Design, Otterness, Schwartz and Holm - Armajani declined to submit - and narrowed the list to Borofsky and Schwartz.
Now what Hartman has characterized as "a tangible demonstration of the city's embrace of the future" and "an icon of the region" has arrived at a moment of truth. According to Laney, the fate of the two proposals should be settled this week.
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