Naperville officials face public art funding dilemma

Naperville has a chicken-or-egg kind of problem when it comes to funding new public art.

Which comes first: The idea or the money?

The idea must come first in the process of receiving support from the city's Special Events and Cultural Amenities fund, along with specifics such as where it will go, its purpose and how it will benefit the community.

But the money must come first in order to solidify an idea and hire an artist to create it, the leader of the Naperville-based public art nonprofit Century Walk Corp. says.

Faced with the dilemma this month as they approved grants from the fund commonly referred to as SECA, city council members said they want to take a step back and re-examine the process of paying for public art.

Council member Theresa Sullivan is the council liaison to the SECA commission, which analyzes annual requests for money from the fund supported by a 1% citywide food and beverage tax and advises the council about which to approve or reject.

Sullivan said she recognizes the challenge Century Walk must face in meeting grant requirements with early concepts for art projects. But she said the commission felt uncomfortable granting funding to an application that listed eight potential projects without saying which one would be chosen.

"We should have some money for public art going forward, but we shouldn't just write blank checks to one nonprofit from the SECA fund each year," Sullivan said.

The city in the past four years has granted a total of $48,000 to Century Walk for new works, Chairman Brand Bobosky said. That's on top of roughly $50,000 a year the city started allocating in 2017 for maintenance of Century Walk pieces that are already in place. There are pieces at 50 sites throughout the city.

Bobosky said an average of $12,000 a year for new art isn't enough. Each new project costs about $75,000, with the art group often partnering with other organizations to raise the funds.

The issue of public art funding came up because the SECA commission recommended denial of Century Walk's request for $120,000 this year.

The city council found a way to put $50,000 toward one planned project - a memorial to the city's four fallen firefighters killed in the line of duty, including three whose deaths came 50 years ago. The city will use SECA money left over from unspent funds in 2019 to partially pay for what Bobosky said will be an artistic addition to a rock and a plaque that already pay tribute to the fallen in Firemen's Memorial Park on Jefferson Avenue.

The discussion led to plenty of calls to find a new process to govern art funding in the future.

"I do think it's important for us to continue creating public art," council member Judith Brodhead said. "I want some attention, some kind of plan moving forward."