Tilted View

One Philadelphian's quest to bring a controversial piece of public art to our city.

Urban art theorist James Dickinson has come up with a brilliant (and only slightly tongue-in-cheek) scheme that, if realized, would add considerable luster to Philly¹s international art cred. At the same time, it would right one of the 20th century¹s most outrageous art injustices: the legal entombment of Richard Serra¹s Tilted Arc. In a Web article titled ³A modest proposal for relocating an important sculpture so as to prevent it from being a burden to the citizens of New York, and for making it once again beneficial to the public (this time in Philadelphia),² Dickinson proposes bringing Tilted Arc to Philadelphia¹s Thomas Paine Plaza (a.k.a. Municipal Services Building Plaza) in Center City.

Dickinson, a Philadelphia resident, sociology teacher at Rider University and occasional curator, has written extensively about art and architecture in cities and, specifically, about Serra and site-specific sculpture. In the decade of art scandals, Serra's was on a par with Mapplethorpe's.

In 1979, when he was commissioned to design a work for New York City's Federal Plaza, Serra was already famous for propping monster sheets of rusting Cor-Ten steel against disturbingly narrow prongs of metal. The perceived danger in these works is no illusion. Some years ago a worker was killed when an improperly installed piece fell inside a storage facility. Though Serra was not responsible, the implicit brute aggression in his oeuvre is real. Confrontational and minimal, it is about space, materials and energy.

On the other hand, though it will never win any congeniality prizes, it is emphatically present in the nuance of surface and scale. Its rigor, a kind of grace and a fascinating responsiveness to weather and time exercise a harsh seductiveness.

The 12-foot-tall, 120-foot-long curve of Tilted Arc intentionally emphasized the flat, uninflected surface of its site. It was installed in 1981 and removed after a legal battle in 1989. For the journal Philosophy and Geography, Dickinson wrote, "At its trial, Tilted Arc faced all kinds of charges. It was accused of being profoundly ugly -- a rusting pile of junk; of promoting totalitarianism and embodying the principles of the enemy, communism; of being responsible for public nuisances including graffiti, rats in buildings and litter; of interrupting pedestrian traffic and public enjoyment of the plaza; of impeding police surveillance and thus of promoting crime; and (extraordinarily) of functioning as a potential blast wall capable of concentrating the effects of terrorist bombings."

Federal Plaza officials instigated the public hearings that led to the 1985 decision to "relocate" the sculpture, but Serra filed lawsuits of his own claiming that the site-specific Arc would be destroyed in essence if relocated arbitrarily. It was a stalemate. The sculpture was placed in storage in 1989 and Serra has successfully blocked attempts to sell it to individual collectors; however, Dickinson believes that he might be persuaded to allow the Arc to reside in Philadelphia. "His personal integrity would not be compromised by this. Serra always criticized the minimalists like Judd and co. because they were working with some generic concept of space -- an empty space. Their works were essentially transportable and installable in some white cube gallery. For Serra, the Federal Plaza was unique. I think that this is a little extreme because there are municipal plazas like that all over the place. Municipal Plaza (in Philly) is a dead ringer for the original place in New York. It doesn't take much of a stretch to say you are being true to the work."

But would Philadelphians object to the sculpture as, apparently, a substantial number of New Yorkers did? There is some dispute as to exactly who really opposed Tilted Arc. Was it numerous office workers as complaints maintained? Or did about half the audience merely question the work and allow themselves to be manipulated by more powerful detractors?

Dickinson believes, "Tilted Arc would have a more friendly audience here, given Philadelphia's public art tradition. It's a little more adventurous than New York."

What a coup it would be to obtain a major 20th-century work for, possibly, the cost of transportation and installation -- not cheap, but infinitely cheaper than buying it. And New York would save storage bills.

Dickinson projects a site in Municipal Plaza which does not disrupt established traffic patterns. The primary difference between the two locations is our Municipal Plaza is divided into squares (currently home to giant Disney-esque chess pieces that could remain in situ), while NYC's Federal Plaza was paved in intersecting arcs, forming an ellipse with the curving footprint of Serra's work. But that subtlety seems trivial against the possibility of allowing Tilted Arc to live again.

It's hard to imagine any official Philadelphia art organization objecting, if funds and permissions could be negotiated. As Dickinson says, "The work would be better off and I would get a chance to see the goddamned thing!"