That's why we were grinning yesterday when we read that Mayor Emanuel, Columbia College and some local South Loop businesses were teaming up to create "The Wabash Arts Corridor" (from Crain's):
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Columbia College today announced plans to transform a stretch of Wabash Avenue from Congress Parkway to Roosevelt Road as part of the mayor's Chicago Cultural Plan.
The city will partner with Columbia and other South Loop organizations "to create public art under the umbrella of the Wabash Arts Corridor," the mayor said in a statement. "The Wabash Arts Corridor puts into action two major goals of the City's Cultural Plan. First, coordinating our cultural and educational assets, and second, leveraging them in a way that benefits our children's education and spurs local businesses."
The city noted that some art projects are already up as part of the arts corridor, including an aerosol art mural (pictured) at the northwest corner of Balbo Avenue and Wabash Avenue.The picture noted was actually a Shots Around the Sloop post we did back on November 18th of 2012.
While we like that the city is behind this initiative, we gotta give the most props to Columbia College. If you've walked down Wabash over the years, it's hard to miss some of Columbia's art installations. It seems like the city is just jumping on the bandwagon.
Don't believe us? Just look at these links from some of our older Shots Around the Sloop:
Any way you look at this it seems like a positive for the neighborhood. It will hopefully produce some good work and maybe even draw some people down to the the corridor to check out some art.
Based on the press release, it sounds like there are plans for some photo project on the Hilton Tower and some photo/english project for the El support beams at Harrison.
What do you think about this initiative?
1 comment:
Give most of the credit to Columbia? Are you suggesting that our mayor, he of the joint city/private company press release or conference or photo op whenever said company has two job openings, would use media to ride the coattails of others' activities, and attempt to spin him into a positive light? Nah, doesn't seem plausible to me....
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