Postcard from Chattanooga

September 20, 2012

by Rocco Landesman

Here I am with Ann Coulter of A.Coulter Consulting who moderated our great community conversation in Chattanooga. Photo by Samuel E. Burns

Last week I visited Chattanooga, Tennessee, for a short but pretty great trip. We began on Wednesday afternoon with a reception with all of the partners involved in the Our Town project we’ve supported there. That project, called Main Terrain, is being led by Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga, and it’s going to be a new urban park with interactive public sculpture. Basically they’re taking an unused and abandoned block that’s connecting two of the main streets downtown and making it into an arts greenway. They’re making it into an aesthetic place that will draw visitors. It’s a perfect example of creative placemaking that has to do with the intersection of public art, physical space, and the general public. It’s one of those projects that will affect people aesthetically who have no intention of buying a ticket to a museum or performance project or anything like that. It really is what I often refer to as “art in the public square.”
Dan Bowers, who’s the president of Allied Arts, was our host. He picked us up at the airport, and then gave us a wonderful car tour introducing us to all of the arts and culture spots in Chattanooga before ferrying us to the Chattanoogan Hotel for a reception with everyone involved in Main Terrain. I was happy to meet Sarah Morgan, who’s a program officer at Lyndhurst Foundation, one of the partners on the project’s design team. Tom Norquist from Playcore, which is also on the team, was there, and I also met Larry Zehnder from Chattanooga Parks and Recreation and Peggy Townsend of Public Art Chattanooga.

Read more: http://artworks.arts.gov/?p=14939