I read with morbid interest this article from one of Philadelphia’s TV stations, thumping its city on the back for its public art collection: https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/entertainment/the-scene/philadelphia-best-street-art-usa-today/4120492/
It says, “The City of Brotherly Love has reclaimed its title as the nation’s Best City for Street Art in the USA TODAY 10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards contest. Public voting helped Philadelphia beat other nominated cities, including Cincinnati, Detroit, Nashville and Chicago.”
Philadelphia’s assertion is quite interesting to me, since I do know something about public art collections. I can say without qualification that grouping Chicago with Cincinnati, Nashville and Detroit is risible.
Does Philadelphia have a huge collection of public mural art? Definitely. The Philadelphia mural collection is undoubtedly the most extensive in the country. Mural Arts Philadelphia, part city agency, part not-for-profit (through Philadelphia Mural Arts Advocates) has promoted mural art in the city for decades. Philadelphia also has an extensive collection of sculpture and other public art. The city makes a big deal of its collection, and rightly so.
Chicago as a city, on the other hand, is utterly oblivious to what actually is the largest collection of public art in the country. Yes, the city has hundreds of murals that have popped up over the years – without a city program of any sort. That just adds to the catalog.
For multiple reasons, some of it tied to innovative developers, architecture firms (such as SOM) and other entities, Chicago’s public art collection grew organically from the late 19th century onward.
The downtown alone now houses hundreds of works – sculptures, reliefs, mosaics, and the like. And yes, city agencies such as the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), the Chicago Park District and the Chicago Transit Authority own or control about 2,000 publicly accessible art works. Not all of DCASE-controlled art is what I define as public: accessible to anyone at any time; a considerable proportion of it is inside buildings not open to the general public, such as schools, a water treatment plant, and the like. On the other hand, the main Chicago Public Library houses 50+ art works, out in the open on each public floor.
Beyond the city-owned/controlled art works are another 2,000 to 3,000 thousand public art works owned by the State of Illinois, the U.S. government, universities, office buildings, arts organizations, hotels, condos, foundations, professional associations, churches and synagogues, clubs, and other entities.
We’re not even counting temporary installations, which themselves add dozens of works annually. And we recently lost access to over 100 works that resided in the Thompson Center, a state office building sold by the state to a developer and being totally gutted and remodeled by Google.
My point here is that the city *passively* owns what it owns, does not publicize even that part of the collection, and is blissfully unaware of the rest of the public art in the city. Not to be snarky or anything, but I’m willing to bet that the eminences of city government have never noticed the sculpture on and in City Hall or the adjoining Cook County Building, never mind, say, the Roger Brown mosaic across the street. They have, possibly, noticed The Picasso next door.
But, as I frequently have to remind myself, I digress.
Philadelphia can make pronouncements about its public art preeminence without even a whimper from Chicago. The City of Chicago, as a city, is, as the saying goes, dumb as a box of rocks about its actual public art preeminence. You’d think that a city so sensitive to its role as a global destination and its reputation would have seen its public art as a unique world resource, since it long ago recognized its importance in architecture.
It hasn’t. It won’t. It’s a shame.
Edmund J. McDevitt
©March 2025
