Port of San Diego Public Art Master Plan
The Unified Port of San Diego sought a plan that would align the agency’s public art program with its mission and align its policies and procedures with best practices in the field. The plan’s innovation was to propose a curatorial framework – Green Port, Working Port, Civic Port – to inspire future work.
Date | 2010
Client | Unified Port of San Diego
Collaborators | Via Partnership
The Unified Port of San Diego is a unique agency with a specialized mission: Balance economic benefits, community services, environmental stewardship and public safety while protecting the SanDiego Bay Tidelands as a resource in trust for the citizens of California.
The Port started its public art initiative in the 1990s, primarily as a means of supporting the Port’s goals of community service and economic development, and the collection currently includes some 100 artworks and periodic exhibitions such as Urban Trees.
But by fall 2009, the program faced a crossroads. There were strong concerns within Port leadership, the regional arts community, and the Port’s constituent cities about the program’s directions — particularly the process by which projects were identified and funded, and the processes for selecting artists and artworks. The port retained Bressi, in collaboration with Meridith McKinley of Via Partnership, to help frame a new vision for the program and revamp policies and procedures as needed.
The plan established three Creative Directions — inspired by the Port’s maritime, environmental, and civic design activities — that will serve as the ongoing focus of the program. And it outlined a process for identifying projects through multi-year Curatorial Workplans that outline the types of projects the program will develop, the kinds of artists it wishes to recruit, specific areas where it wishes to develop projects, and partnerships it would like to cultivate. Finally, it outlined significant changes to the Port’s commissioning process, tenant art program, and donations policies to place more decisions in the hands of the Port’s professional arts staff.
The plan was approved in May, 2010, and public art staff will begin implementing this new approach over the next year.
