Parks, Recreation and Culture wants program that funds public art to become a permanent city ordinance

photo by: Bremen Keasey

Part of the glass sculpture at Lawrence's Central Transit Station. The Parks, Recreation and Culture department's master plan explores an option to make the city's "percent for art" program stronger.

For decades, the City of Lawrence’s biggest building projects, including its police headquarters and bus station, have set aside a portion of their funding for public art, and now a new proposal could make this tradition stronger by permanently enshrining it as a city ordinance.

The program is called Percent for Art, and it’s been around since the City Commission initially approved a resolution on it in 1986. It states that the City Commission may annually set aside up to 2% of “the cost of all capital improvements … during the previous fiscal year for the acquisition, purchase, and installation of art in public places.”

Porter Arneill, an assistant director with the Parks, Recreation and Culture Department, said Percent for Art was “really visionary” when it was first created in the ’80s. Over the years, it’s funded large-scale pieces of public art — including, recently, the colorful glass sculpture and outdoor light posts at the Lawrence Transit Central Station and the “Through Other Eyes” installation near the police headquarters in west Lawrence.

But Arneill said that the language of the resolution, which says that the commission “may” set aside those funds, means it can sometimes be overlooked. So, as part of the development of its master plan, Parks, Recreation and Culture looked at ways to strengthen Percent for Art, and one of the things it proposes is asking the City Commission to codify the Percent for Art resolution by making it a full-fledged city ordinance.

While drafting the master plan, the department looked at three “benchmark” cities — Corvallis, Ore., Bloomington, Ind. and Columbia, Mo. — and found that all three had a dedicated public art ordinance, Arneill said. Since Lawrence has already had its program in place for “nearly 40 years,” he said, the department and consultants thought it would be a good idea to make it stronger.

“If we already have a policy, it would be wise to expand it,” Arneill said.

This isn’t the first time city officials have talked about improving Percent for Art. City commissioners in 2022 had discussed changes to the program, including adding more opportunities for community involvement in the process and thinking about ways to distribute art more evenly throughout the city.

That last part is easier said than done, though. Arneill said finding a place for public art can be a tricky process, and that it often makes the most sense to put the art in or near the building it’s associated with.

Sometimes, Arneill said, that’s because of the way the building project tied to the art was funded. If bonds are used to fund a capital project, the public art associated with it has to be located in close proximity to the project that generated the funding. If the funding came through some other mechanisms, there could be more room to move the art around, Arneill said.

photo by: Kim Callahan

The art installation “Through Other Eyes” is pictured Tuesday near Lawrence’s police headquarters, 5100 Overland Drive. The work was paid for by the city’s longstanding Percent for Art program.

There have been projects with greater wiggle room. One recent example is “Through Other Eyes,” the gazebo-like structure that was funded alongside the police headquarters. It is not actually on the headquarters site, because much of the headquarters is accessible only to police department employees and not the general public. Instead, the artwork was placed in a green space near the building.

Any changes that Parks, Recreation and Culture explores as part of its new master plan will be subject to public feedback and final approval by the City Commission, but Arneill feels that a more robust public arts program is in line with Lawrence’s trajectory as well as its history of supporting the arts.

“Any city that is growing, you are looking aspirationally to the future,” Arneill said. “(This) is a way to think about how we are designing the city, including in the arts.”