Labeled as an urban oasis and aspiring to become a “civic jewel”, the Citygarden, which is in the heart of downtown Saint Louis, opened on July 1st 2009. It serves as an urban sculpture garden featuring modern and contemporary sculptures. It is a project funded by The Gateway Foundation (at a price tag of approximately $30 million), to help revive downtown Saint Louis. Though not a relatively new or groundbreaking idea, the garden gives a much-needed boost to the possibilities of public art within The Saint Louis region. What it comes down to is: good design and an attitude towards public education that is accessible.
Saint Louis like many other cities is a city that has been experiencing a rise in those living in lofts and apartments within its urban core. Beyond an investment in living at the core of the city, Saint Louis is also seeing a renewed interest in the downtown area as well as its grand arts district from people traveling from the suburban outposts looking for attractions in the heart of the city. The irony is that the suburbs are exactly what contributed to the economic decline in Saint Louis within the city in the 1950s. Now downtown Saint Louis is trying to revitalize itself by attracting many to return the origins of the city, to the heart of its core from these suburban locales.
Downtown St. Louis is modest in comparison to the downtown of Chicago hailed for its public art (think Millennium Park). Yet for the flack that Downtown St. Louis receives, it has a decent number of historic, family oriented attractions such as the Gateway Arch, The Old Courthouse, The Washington Street Art district and the unique City Museum. The Citygarden is a great addition to these educational and artistic attractions.
Blossoming within the Gateway Mall, an area of downtown that has been ignored for a long time and serves according to locals as a place where “ the homeless sleep”, this sculpture garden is bustling with the energy of the twenty first century. It was not long ago that this area was nothing but an unattractive grass mall full of numerous cracked sidewalks. The buildings towered over this plaza where life seemed to barely converge.
This once unattractive park is now a highly accessible park which is unfenced and offers entrance from all its points. It is just across from what many unfortunately claim as the “unattractive and inaccessible” Richard Serra piece titled Twain (named after Missourian Mark Twain). Yet with a renewed interest in this area of downtown, Serra’s twain appears to receive some of the benefits of having a beautiful park just across the street. The citygarden for many of its visitors that live and work in Saint Louis renews public art and gives it justice, even if none of the pieces are site specific. More importantly, it attempts to educate one on the motives behind making public sculpture and a free public garden by the use of maps which contain a small amount of information on all 23 pieces featured and the use of audio tours via your cellular device (hosted by local celebrities such as Ozzie Smith formerly of The Saint Louis Cardinals and Jenna Fischer of the hit television show The Office). If only the same could be done for Serra, perhaps Twain would have a higher acceptance rating.
There are many features that make the Citygarden a treasured space. One can sense that every part of the three acres of landscape and sculpture was planned with every detail taken into consideration. The use of public space for a garden that features local and regional plants is a popular thing to do in the age where interest in sustainability has grown popular (as it should be). However, we can learn so much about our surroundings, the native area we inhabit and its history through thinking this way. Not to mention, that this is a step in a right direction for Saint Louis. The Citygarden, though packed at lunch hour as business executives, construction workers, and lawyers take a lunch break, serves as a place of relaxation, play, and hopefully inspiration.
What truly makes this sculpture garden enjoyable is the amount of time dedicated to the sustainable features (designed in collaboration with landscape architect Nelson Byrd Woltz) which aides in educating visitors of the beautiful natural elements of the Saint Louis Region. The sustainable features include: green roofs upon the architecture (which helps reduce the “ Urban Heat Island Effect”), rain gardens (six separate ones which covers more than 5,000 sq. ft and helps prevent erosion, water pollution, and flooding), and plants (mostly Missouri natives), which are designed to give a unique experience and a humbling one at that. There is care expressed clearly in the designed of this park. In an age where projects are built without consideration and skyscrapers have become the symbol of status, this is incredibly meaningful to see within an economic decline.
Combined with the plant life, there are also three water fountains in which two of the three (The floodplain Band and The River Terrace Band) are designed to be interactive cooling elements for the public. On any given day you can watch children run through The Floodplain band, which is a paved field of 102 vertical jets that project water up to ten feet in height.
The other fountain is the The Rivers Bluffs Band, which cascades from the café terrace to the floodplain band below as a waterfall constructed from native limestone. It represents the falls and the bluffs of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. This is all part of an attempt to present three bands that represent the natural history of Saint Louis and its surroundings, through representation of geographic features of the province.
Most of the sculptures themselves are not site specific and were not commissioned for the park with the exception of Big White Gloves, Big Four Wheels by Jim Dine and special casting of bronze by Marisol, which will arrive next year. The collection overall offers a view of modern and contemporary sculpture of European and American artists. None of the sculptures featured are incredibly loud. The intent for the park is to be enjoyed therefore the art is not overly challenging. There are no great demands put upon the viewer where the Serra’s Twain across the street offers a conceptual challenge.
The Gateway Foundation already owned two of the 24 sculptures and the rest were purchased for display. The gardens sports many famous and typical names that one would expect to find in a sculpture garden such as Jim Dine, Niki De Saint Phalle, George Rickey, Mark Di Survero, Tom Otterness, Tony Smith, and Benar Venet. Most of the work verges on the abstract (such as the Benar Venet’s 230.5 Degree Arc x 5 and Mark de Suvero’s Aseope’s Fables) or the metaphorical (such as Donald Baechler’s Scarecrow and Aristide Mailol’s La Rivere). A personal treat was Keith Haring’s Untitled (Ringed Finger), which is situated at the Southern River Terrace Band. It presents the energy of an abstracted body in motion. The simplicity of the piece, made from painted steel, is reminiscent of his work for children’s hospitals and came as a nice surprise and a beautiful welcoming gesture to the western edge of the park.
The cutting edge and contemporary “ works” that the park offers are two LED panels designed and programmed by Julian Opie (titled This is Kiera and Julian Walking and This is Bruce and Sarah Walking) which present the everyman and woman walking in a continuous animation and a 10-foot-long outdoor state of the art LED video wall. The video wall apparently will be utilized for baseball games, movies, commercial films, and art videos. The art videos will be chosen by a team of curators, one each from St. Louis' major museums: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, and the St. Louis Art Museum.
The crowd favorite and one of the nice surprises was the polish artist Igor Mitoraj’s Eros Bendato (translated: Eros Bound). This is probably the most powerful and awe-inspiring pieces that the garden has to offer. Eros Bendato greets visitors on the southeastern edge of the park, and is meant to be the dismembered head of Eros, The Greek god of love and desire. Bandages wrapped around head bind Eros, suggesting that desires and ideas have been imprisoned. What is powerful is the fact that it presents the idea that civilization is being held together amongst the chaos. For this fact, Eros Bendato is possibly the most thought provoking piece in the entire garden.
The Citygarden is not ground breaking but a nice dose of art and nature in the middle of what use to be desolate urban jungle. It has become the intersection for play and relaxation during the workweek and for visitors to the city. It is no Millennium Park but its purpose should not be competition. It has brought beauty among the concrete and asphalt underneath the skyline of the arch and should become one of the Midwest’s many treasures, while blossoming into a “ civic jewel” for the city of St. Louis.
related links:
http://www.citygardenstl.org
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