Downtown Vision, Inc is the Business Improvement District for Downtown Jacksonville. Their stated mission is to create and support a vibrant Downtown.
Tonight they achieved just the opposite with one of Downtown’s Crown Jewels, the First Wednesday Art Walk.
Art Walk has been running for 14 years. It’s purpose, from the beginning; to promote local artists, the cultural community of Jacksonville, and Downtown small businesses, to make the streets of downtown vibrant.
Art Walk, centered in and around Hemming Park, with multiple venues along the walk, artists, both material as well as performance, set up throughout the park and on the sidewalks in front of participating venues has been a winning formula for fourteen years.
Last Art Walk, August 2nd. There was a small group made, up mostly of out of town Confederate sympathizers, protesting City Council President Anna Lopez Brosche’s recent actions to remove Confederate monuments.
So what? A handful of protesters at an Art event. Art has always been controversial.
Andres Serrano, Piss Christ
The photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in a cup of the artist’s urine has sparked controversy since its creation, but public anger came to a climax in 2011 in Avignon, France, when Catholic fundamentalists attempted to destroy the photograph with hammers.
Robert Mapplethorpe, X Portfolio
In June 1989—just a few months after his untimely death from AIDS—a retrospective of over 150 of Robert Mapplethorpe’s works was due to open at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, DC. However, the sexually explicit nature of the photographs, which featured sado-masochism and homosexuality, drew the wrath of Capitol Hill’s conservative lawmakers. In a misguided attempt to avoid controversy, the exhibition was canceled, adding fuel to the so-called “Culture Wars.”
Chris Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary The large painting depicts a black Virgin Mary and incorporates elephant dung as well as collaged pornographic images.
Tracey Emin, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995
Emin created a tent on which she appliquéd the 102 names of everyone she had slept with or beside, in either a sexual or platonic sense.
Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have to be Naked to get into the Met. Museum?
A poster campaign to raise awareness of the lack of women artists represented in major contemporary art establishments.
Art and controversy have gone hand in hand for centuries. Here in Jacksonville, Art wasn’t even the controversy. Jacksonville hasn’t had an art controversy since former City Council president Clay Yarboroug walked into MOCA and saw a “pornographic display”. For the record all he saw was a photograph of a woman with “bare breasts exposed”. Imagine that, seeing a woman’s breast in an art museum.
So, yeah, Jacksonville, no art controversy back in 2014, sorry, Clay and no controversy in August 2017. Just a few Confederate sympathizers walking around without their sheets.
Nothing to do with Art Walk. Right? Wrong. Well, you are right, nothing to do with Art Walk but Downtown Vision, Inc. didn’t see it that way. They waited until a week before Art Walk to start informing Artists that they would not be allowed to set up in the park or anywhere else outside within the Art Walk.
They claimed the changes were necessary “to ensure a safe event.” When pushed for answers as to what Downtown Vision, Inc thought might happen that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office would be unable to protect Art Walk attendees from, Downtown Vision, Inc stated “We aren’t aware of any protests planned this month”
September’s Art Walk theme was, The Dog Days of Summer. An event that Downtown Vision, Inc had encouraged residents to bring their dogs to for months was suddenly an inside event. An inside event where only 12 out of more than 50 venues allowed dogs inside. Bring your dog but you can’t go inside 76% of the shops.
The event’s theme was dogs and dogs were only allowed in 24% of Art Walk.
That’s sad, really sad.
But wait, it gets sadder, because the main theme was Art.
Art Walk, has to have artists, material and performance artists, but due to Downtown Vision, Inc’s poor last minute, unorganized switch up of the event many artists were left with nowhere to perform. Hip Hop Artists in particular took a hard hit.
Think about that for a minute; some Confederate sympathizers want to keep “their statue” in “their park” and suddenly the Hip Hop guy (The Lyricist Live) isn’t welcome at Art Walk anymore.
The Lyricist Live is an open mic rhyme Cypher that had occurred every first Wednesday of the month during Downtown Vision’s Art Walk for the past 6 plus years. Hosted by veteran emcee, Mal Jones,(CEO and founder of The Lyricist LIVE) and (Coral Castle ENT) who brings LIVE Hip Hop to the streets of downtown Duval every month, and puts local and national artist on display as a LIVE moving portrait of Hip Hop’s golden era.
Mal rises, always has, always will. He found a home, at least for September, at MOSH, across the river. Maybe a forever home? Fingers crossed.
So Downtown Vision, Inc kicked out Hip Hop and many other artists, a disportionate number of artists of color, because they were worried about protestors even though they said “We aren’t aware of any protests planned this month”
Something just doesn’t add up.
But they were right, actually they were so wrong but they were right about no protests. There was no protest and there was no Hip Hop. There was no sea of artists within Hemming Park nor was there a sea of people walking from table to table, event to event.
I have attended Art Walk many times over the past 14 years. I have never seen a smaller, less vibrant crowd.
Congratulations, Downtown Vision, Inc . Your poor vision, poor decision making and poor planning and execution killed September’s Art Walk.
This article is the second in a series.
1. The Lyricist Live has been asked to not perform
2. Downtown Vision Inc killed the Art Walk
3. A Tale of Two Art Walks