UrbanArt Press 2007-2010

In December, Carissa Hussong, founding executive director of Memphis' UrbanArt Commission, left the organization she helped create to become executive director of the National Ornamental Metal Museum. She's been replaced by John Weeden, a lanky, bespectacled Memphis native and Rhodes College graduate, with a pair of artrelated master's degrees from Sotheby's in London and New York's Bard College.

In its 10-year existence, the UrbanArt Commission, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the development and implementation of public art, has stirred up its share of controversy. It also has had a measurable impact on the Bluff City's physical identity by creating such major public artworks as the Cooper-Young trestle project and the epically conceived sculpture group that greets visitors to the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.

Weeden, who most recently worked as assistant director of the Rhodes College Center for Outreach in the Development of the Arts, is astonished by how much the commission has accomplished in a decade. But he's convinced that the surface has barely been scratched. The Flyer recently talked to Weeden about UrbanArt and the state of public art in Memphis.

Flyer: You've noted that there weren't many art jobs available in Memphis when you returned from Europe, where you were having some success as a curator. What inspired you to come back?

John Weeden: I was in Europe, living my dream. I was a curator working with contemporary artists from around the world. That's what I worked my butt off for and dragged myself through two graduate programs to get to. But a couple of factors influenced my decision to return to Memphis: My father had some health issues while I was abroad. Thankfully, that's no longer a motivating factor. But also, while I was overseas dealing with artists in a professional capacity, I noticed this trend: Nomadism was in vogue. Everybody seemed motivated by a sense of dislocation, because they didn't identify with any one place or any particular culture. It boggled my mind that these people didn't connect with anybody else, or any place or culture. That was when it occurred to me that I have a connection to a place and to a culture and to a group of people who love me and care about me. And that place is Memphis. I value that. You can call anyplace home, but you have to work for it. If you don't work for it, you'll always be dislocated.

Carissa Hussong put so much of herself into the UrbanArt Commission and took some grief as its public face. Are there pitfalls — or advantages — to being the second person to hold the position?

Carissa devoted herself to it, and sometimes she got a lot of flack for learning how to do things, because she was the first person to try and do this here. She deserves all the kudos in the world, because when nothing's been done before, there's a steep learning curve. Some things will work, some will work only halfway, and some will leave you saying, "Damn, I wish I hadn't done that."

Luckily for me, she's run interference and done a lot of the heavy lifting.

Now we've got to maintain relationships that have already been built. But also we must identify what can be done differently and better. And what's been done perhaps unsuccessfully in the past. It's taken the organization 10 years to build a firm foundation for how the commission completes its work. And there are areas in terms of community building that have not been done that successfully.

Where have things gone wrong?

Well, UrbanArt is a very small organization. It's just two full-time staff people and me and an administrative assistant who comes in two days a week. So, when you've got 30 or more projects going on at one time, the project-management side of that alone evaporates all of your available outreach possibilities. Luckily, now we've gotten the project-management process down pretty well. We know how to complete things. Elizabeth Alley is the director of public art. Laura Caroline Johnson, the project coordinator, has been training under 24 Elizabeth to do much