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The Carmel City Council approved spending $180,000 Monday night to purchase two bronze statues to bring greater racial diversity to the city’s art collection.
Since Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard took office in 1996, the city of Carmel has amassed a collection of 21 statues created by the late New Jersey-based artist J. Seward Johnson. Just two of the more than two dozen people depicted in those sculptures are Black, and both are featured as part of a single installation that the city started leasing 10 years ago.
Brainard’s now-approved request for $180,000 paves the way for the city to purchase its first Johnson statues featuring people of Black and Indian descent.
“This isn’t a one shot and we’re done. This is something we need to continue to do each year as we expand our collection to make sure the collection represents the entire community,” Brainard said to the finance committee earlier that day. “Not just in the people they portray, but in the artists that make the sculpture as well.”
The appropriation passed 7-2, with council members Tim Hannon and Anthony Green voting against the request.
Johnson died in March, meaning the “Waiting to Cross” sculpture depicting a young Black girl holding on to a stop sign will be an original. The city’s second planned statue will be produced by the exclusive owner of Johnson’s copyright, the Seward Johnson Atelier Inc.
During the council’s finance committee meeting, Brainard said he talked to leaders in the Carmel’s Indian community who’ve said they’d like to contribute additional funds to purchase a sculpture that includes not just a single Indian person, but a man and woman, or an entire family.
Hannon said he supported greater diversity within the collection, but he felt the middle of a pandemic was the wrong time for the purchase—especially since that money will be in addition to the proposed $1.3 million for public art in next year’s budget.
“To spend $180,000—out of what essentially amounts to reserves—on artwork when we have small businesses that are suffering, when we have families that are suffering,” Hannon said. “I think the council should be using those funds for small business supports, to put into food pantries or other things that could support our families in a pandemic.”
Brainard said the statues promote economic development by attracting tourists who go on to spend money at local shops and restaurants.
Council member Adam Aasen, who owns Donatello’s Italian Restaurant in the Carmel Arts & Design District, said he’s seen many people stop and take photos with the statues. He said the city should do what’s necessary to make Carmel as welcoming a community as possible, and that includes increasing racial representation.
Other members weren’t opposed to the timing. Council member Jeff Worrell was impatient to improve representation within the collection.
“I’m disappointed that we’re quibbling over timing when, in my opinion, we’re trying to address a group of our residents that also feel disenfranchised,” Worrell said. “I want this fixed last week, I want this fixed last month.”
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Buying statues doesn’t change anything. Behavior and attitudes need to change. Brainard thinks he can buy anything and that is the real problem. Statues don’t resolve anything, Jim. Grow up.
I would like to see Seward Johnson do a bronze of a homeless person sleeping under a Monon Trail underpass as a representation of diversity and inclusion.
Way to joke about the unfortunate among us, John F.! I guess that’s normal in Carmel.
Maybe we can get a sculpture of a white police officer pulling over a black driver with a Marion County license plate?
Heartwarming to see Carmel working to ensure other ethnic groups can be represented with grotesque public art.
Good thing Carmel has money to burn on public art projects. Glad I’m not paying taxes there.
Anybody know how to spell “T O K E N”?
I appreciate the effort to make diversity more visible through art. I would have rather seen the budget for public art stay at $1.3m, but make investment in racially diverse art as a priority and cut something else to cover the costs. I’d like to see tough decisions made that demonstrate fiscal responsibility AND the priority of diversity & inclusion.
After the mayor’s inappropriate and ill-timed actions following George Floyd’s murder, the racists writings and comments from a Carmel based Catholic priest, and the exposure of wide spread and parent-enabled racially motivated hate within Carmel Schools, Mayor Brainard needs to lead and demonstrate values that we can be proud of instead of actions and underlying values that are the source of his citizens’ embarrassment and shame.
What do these statues do to help racial inequality? Nothing. The money should have went to programs to help.
Many people are jobless, many don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Yet Carmel wastes this amount of money to shallowly display a false image they care?
Shameful.