It’s been two years since the plan to put some God-awful sculpture in the middle of an Annapolis traffic circle imploded with a hue and cry of crowd-sourced art criticism.
Now the volunteer committee charged with the job has imploded too, disbanded in a rare emergency move driven by widespread frustration.
Maybe this is progress.
“There are a lot of boats that people want to get rid of,” said Jim Martin, a member of the now-defunct Art in Public Places Commission. “Put one there. It could change every year.”
Westgate Circle at the edge of downtown is more than an embarrassingly empty canvas for public art, a small round of grass that screams, “Fill this space!”
It is a symbol of what’s wrong with publicly funded art in Maryland’s small-town state capital.
The commission was created 25 years ago with good intentions and a minuscule budget. Then in 2021, well-meaning state legislators supercharged it with 3% of the hotel tax revenue collected in the city. That added up to more than $500,000 over the last five years.
Few were happy with the results.
“When did it go awry?” asked Sally Wern Comport, a nationally known artist from Annapolis who said she struggled to get meetings with the commission. “I believe that big funding source with zero accountability meant that the chair and those who were on the commission had no oversight.
“I didn’t see evidence that they were asking for valued, experienced opinion when they were considering their projects.”
No powerful champions. Without much art to show for its work. The commission has been doomed for some time.
It took Alderwoman Karma O’Neill to finally kill it. Last month, she convinced the City Council to immediately suspend Art in Public Places and turn over its decisions to city planning director Chris Jakubiak.
“I think that this needs a reset,” she said.
So where does Annapolis go from here? There are clues in what happened.
Martin and Steve Carr have watched this unfold from beginning to end.
Carr helped then-Mayor Ellen Moyer create the commission, and his friend, Martin, was among the final people appointed to serve on it.
After a plan to choose from among three sculptures for the circle collapsed in 2024, Martin proposed making it the commission’s top priority.
Chair Lyn Farrow created a subcommittee. Still no progress.
“The bottom line was they did nothing,” Martin said.
Money went for concerts and festivals, but only a few pieces of art. That 3% turned the Art in Public Places Commission from art buyers to broad grant providers. Art became arts.
“AIPPC was formed to do public art around the city, not provide grant money for film festivals,” Carr said.
Farrow, the former chair of the commission, agreed that money was the root of the upheaval. Her goal was to diversify who benefited from it.
“That funding should be distributed throughout the city so that all communities have access to arts and culture,” she said.
There was fighting on the committee. Members quit. They shouted at each other in meetings. Few had any experience in the arts.
One of the few who did flipped the bird at the other members in her final session.
The end came in December.
Comport and Chuck Walsh, founder of the Annapolis Art Walk, raised money to make multistory fabric banners, temporary murals reproducing works by local artists in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
They asked the commission to endorse the images, including one for the Mills-Hillman Garage that featured George Washington resigning his military commission in Annapolis in 1783.
Time, they said, was short.
A long, emotional squabble followed. It touched on the well-known fact that Washington enslaved people. The commission couldn’t agree on the content.
Farrow mistakenly interpreted a split vote — three in favor, one opposed and two abstentions — as falling short of a majority. It actually counts as approval.
By the time the city attorney’s office straightened out the confusion, it may have been too late. When the murals go up next month, it’s unclear if any will hang from city buildings.
The inaction caught the attention of the committee planning 250th celebrations, which endorsed and helped fund the murals.
O’Neill is its co-chair.
“How is it with the quality of art and talent that we have in our community, that we are offering this gift to the city, and they are rejecting it?” Walsh asked.
“It’s the gift they won’t let us give.”
In the legislation disbanding the commission, Jakubiak gets temporary control of the funding. The idea is to come up with a new plan, one that answers to the City Council.
On Friday, the city called for applications.
“Do you care about the arts and want to help shape the creative future of our community? Apply for the City of Annapolis Arts in Public Places Commission!”
But art by a new committee, or even council, is no guarantee that the result will be any better.
“We should be coming up with art ideas by interviewing the communities, getting some ideas, getting some commitment from people in the communities to what they want or what they would accept and then do [a request for proposals],” Martin said.
“Pay the artist to create the art. That’s the way it should run.”
Other cities have figured it out. Many have someone in the city administration who acts as an advocate for the arts, an art czar.
That idea was central to the Annapolis Arts Plan, a 2024 study commissioned by the Annapolis Arts District, a stretch of West Street populated by galleries, music clubs and art festivals.
Whatever takes the place of Art in Public Places, it will inherit Westgate Circle.
“I am so vehement about content not becoming the job or the purview of a commission like this,” Comport said. “You cannot make art with a committee. You just can’t.”
Until Annapolis figures that out, the circle will remain unfulfilled.
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