Biggest arts story of the day has got to be "City officials eye plan for public art" by Andrea Estes in the Globe's Metro section. City councilor Michael Ross tells Estes that today he'll propose a 1% developer set-aside for public art in the city, a proposal that has arisen before in various forms without quite going through. Although there's a small amount of city funds set aside for such things - the Arthur Fiedler statue on the Esplanade, the ducklings in the Public Garden - Boston does lag behind other cities in supporting outdoor art. I lived in Chicago
for a decade, and that city's outdoor art, like that big 'ol Picasso (left) has had a major if unmeasurable impact on that city's sense of itself. As Estes points out, it wouldn't be a bad thing for the Athens of America to embark on a similar initiative.
Both the Globe and the Herald had a slightly different take than mine on William Koch's visit yesterday to the exhibit of his treasures at the MFA. Koch's ego was amusingly on display, but I was surprised they both brushed past Koch's comments in support of Director Malcolm Rogers' series of pop exhibits. ... The Herald reports that the musical "On The Twentieth Century" is coming to the Cutler Majestic Sept. 23-25.
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