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TPR’s Arts and Culture Reporter Jack Morgan recently returned from a trip to Auckland, New Zealand with thoughts about how San Antonio's public art scene compares to that of Auckland.
Both Auckland and San Antonio have a lot of public art. As to how each city creates and exhibits public art, there are parallels between the two cities, but they are also quite different.
Auckland’s population is 1.6 million, just a couple of hundred thousand more than San Antonio’s. And the two cities’ parallels don’t end there. They both have massive towers, though Auckland’s Sky Tower is 250-feet higher than Hemisfair Tower.
On a recent visit, I saw a lot of public art there and got to wondering how the cities’ arts compare.
I spoke with Hayley Wolters, manager of public art for the Auckland Council, and then back home I spoke with Krystal Jones, director of the city of San Antonio's Department of Arts and Culture.
They both harness public dollars and turn them into memorable art to reflect their city’s unique history and cultures.
The first place where Auckland varies from the Alamo City is how public art is funded.
“One percent of Auckland Council's capital expenditure is allocated over a 10 year period to our team, to public art,” Wolters said. “And we essentially both commission and then look after Auckland Council's Public Art collection, which is a huge honor and a privilege.”
In Auckland, rather than budgets based on the calendar year, art budgets are decade based.
“We know roughly what we're working with each year and that makes it easy to plan. We also tend to look at things quite far out,” Wolters said.
Krystal Jones notes that here in San Antonio, that budget is done every year. In the Alamo City, where that funding comes from has several sources, one of which is what’s called the HOT tax, or the Hotel Occupancy Tax.
“Our operational funding to run a department is from a 15% allocation of the city's piece of the hotel occupancy tax,” Jones said.
That idea took Wolters by surprise.
“Oh, that's really interesting to hear. We don't have anything quite like that,” she said.
They do have a program that incentivizes creation of art when a new building is proposed.
![Stargazer [Citali] at the River Walk Art Garden](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e44a1ec/2147483647/strip/true/crop/760x468+0+29/resize/880x542!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F1e%2Fc8%2F74924b5a443a9ed49a2427bb8cb7%2Fstargazer.jpg)
“So where there's a developer who wants to create a building this is essentially a program that they can access, by which if they agree to create public art, there's a singular way to support them more strongly to create the building,” Wolters said.
Another parallel between the cities is how both have plotted every last piece of public art on an internet-based map so you can know where to find them.
“Absolutely, an interactive map. If you hover over a particular area, it'll show you, you've got three or four artworks nearby,” Wolters said. “They can click on the bubble that indicates where it is, and it will tell you all about the work.”
Pictures of each piece are plotted as well.
San Antonio’s version of that map is at getcreativesanantonio.com, and Jones says their map may have a future use.
“We want to see it spread and maybe create these kind of public art trails, if you will, to be really a discoverable asset of the city,” Jones said.
Of course, not all public art is equivalent — huge pieces, small ones, historic, murals, statues — but the two leaders whose jobs are to help create each city’s installations do have ones that when they pass make them feel a strong sense of pride. Here’s Wolters’ favorite at this time.
“I can give you a really good example of one that we've just recently brought into the collection called Te Hokinga Mahara, which translates to Collection Of Memories. And so that's the work that we partnered with an iwi called Ngāti Manuhiri to create,” she said.
Iwi is a Māori word for a people, or tribe.
“And essentially it tells the story of Ngāti Manuhiri. It’s a lights and sound artwork. It's placed along 160 meters of a river in Warkworth, which is a suburb in Auckland,” Wolters said. “Just the reception to that work in terms of how it has transformed the space, how it has transformed the experience of people who take a walk along that river, it’s just been phenomenal.”
Krystal Jones echoes Haley Wolters’ thoughts.
“I have I have a sense of pride every time I see public art that I've been a part of,” Jones said. “But even when I see pieces that I've just known and love…I live near Beacon Hill and the roundabout there, I just I love I love The Beacon and I just love seeing public art everywhere.”
Angel Rodriguez Diaz’s 28-foot tall The Beacon is lit-from-within steel obelisk is in a traffic circle and metaphorically lights the way.
"No public art location, no public art piece is the same. You will find many of my peer cities will get together and say, ‘We wish there was a formula.’ But that's the beauty of it, because every single project is completely different," Jones said.
As to how Wolters measures a piece’s success, she hopes that those standing close by a piece are made to feel.
“This makes me feel like I belong. This makes me proud of my culture. This makes me feel like a sense of identity in terms of the way that I experience my city,” she said.
Both cities have multiple public meetings to get input and approval every step of the way, and both cities have several hundreds of public art pieces.
San Antonio and Auckland have devised ways to fund and create lots of public art through the years. And while every piece necessitates several after-hours meetings in each neighborhood to get traction and create consensus, both Wolters and Jones seem to be having the time of their lives.
