Public Art in Main Streets

Factual Questions
1

How many cities have main streets with a significant or even better a proliferation of public art?

Examples I can think of include:

  1. the Midosuji in Osaka, Japan. The Midosuji runs through the central business district in Japan’s second largest city. As part of plans to revitalize the Midosuji and create a “Midosuji brand”, in April 2001 the city commissioned and installed waist-level plinths bearing small pieces of art, spaced every 50 metres along the sidewalk;

  2. the twin lion statues outside the entrance to the HSBC building in Hong Kong, although on a road adjacent to and not actually situated on Hong Kong’s main street of Queen’s Road Central, are tourist attractions. Visitors have photographs taken with the lion statues. The lion statues are considered lucky, and have historical significance (they bear bullet marks from the invasion of Hong Kong by Japan in the Second World War).

Any others?

2

There are also two bronze lions in from of the Art Institute on Michigan Bvd. in Chicago!

3

Chicago has great public art. The Picasso, The Bean (I know…it’s not everyone’s cuppa but I love it), and we had a temporary, and faaaabulous Chihouly exhibit a year or so ago. The world needs more public art.

4

Here’s a little of the Garfield Park Conservatory exhibit. And it was a few years ago…time flies!

http://www.chihuly.com/installations/garfield/

5

Some of that is awesome:

http://www.chihuly.com/installations/garfield/tower001.html

…but I keep expecting to see dinosaurs step out from behind the foliage.

From memory Madrid also has a great statue of Velesquez, and near the palace a lot of old statues regrettably covered in grafitti.

And I also seem to recall Barcelona has lots of good public art… down past the column of Columbus at the end of La Rambla, near the beack? A big bronze thing?

6

Are you talking about art lining the streets? I was in Naples Florida and they have these painted and decorated alligators they swear is art. They are all over the place: downtown, the malls, the beaches, all over!

Enjoy the gators!

7

During a recent trip to San Diego I was taken by the proliferation of new public art there, particularly along the waterfront.

8

Sedona Arizona is an artist haven. Not just Main Street, but everywhere you look there is a gallery, street vendor, roving artist or ancient artifact. One of my favorite spots in the world. Very :cool: place!

9

And the Calder.

10

I thought of that one and couldn’t remember the name of it. Thanks! She’s a beauty.

11

Grand Junction, Colorado, my adopted home town.

Who knew? :slight_smile:

12

This one literally and figuratively stops traffic on Music Row in Nashville. The concept was good, but it’s not my favorite thing. Guess it could have been worse.

It was much more interesting in this incarnation, don’t you think?