Bethel Burying Ground Memorial Moves to Next Phase With careful deliberation and robust community engagement, the City’s Art Commission has given the green light to Karen Olivier’s design. By Duncan Spencer
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opefully by now, everybody knows that the design selection for the Historic Bethel Burying Ground Memorial is complete and that plans from local artist Karyn Olivier have been approved by the Philadelphia Art Commission. Along with QVNA President Eleanor Ingersoll, I had the pleasure of serving on the City’s Bethel Burying
QUEEN VILLAGE QUARTERLY CRIER \\ SUMMER 2021
Ground (BBG) Memorial Committee, which helped make the selection. The project is now in the contract stage with groundbreaking expected around September 2021. The Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy secured a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for cultural programming around themes of The
Bethel Burying Ground (BBG) Memorial, with details forthcoming. For those curious about the BBG Memorial Committee’s process, this is it: We considered the anonymous scores from the public’s surveys, and we met each artist, via video, to hear their vision firsthand. Then we discussed each proposal, scored it independently, considered pros
