Out of Commission: Restorations bring public artwork to new heights

If cranes descend on your favorite piece of Toledo public artwork, odds are you won’t see it for a while.

There’s no date stamped on the side, but public artwork comes with an expiration date.

“Paint fades in a way that’s pretty predictable,” said Ben Cook, public art manager for the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo. “We tend to usually be pretty much in keeping with what we expect.”

Last week, it was the Art Tatum Celebration Column ’s turn.

On Oct. 16, workers removed the 27-foot-tall stack of piano keys located outside the Huntington Center on 499 Madison Ave. for comprehensive restoration, including a new coating and an update to internal lighting fixtures.

Built in 2009 by American sculptor and musician Cork Marcheschi, the piece is a tribute to Toledo native and jazz legend Art Tatum.

While the diversity of sizes and building materials produce variations, pieces exposed to Ohio’s four full seasons generally take about 10 to 15 years before they need the kind of heavy-duty maintenance that involves removing them from display.

But this autumnal farewell won’t last forever.

The Arts Commission checks each piece during annual maintenance to decide whether it’s time for a full overhaul — with the accuracy of material science, their number is usually up within the expected timeframe.

As chair of the Arts Commission’s Art in Public Places conservation subcommittee, retired Toledo Museum of Art exhibition designer Claude Fixler is part of the team that assesses when it’s time to bring a piece in for renovation.

If they vote yes, the process gets moving.

“It's pretty complicated,” Fixler said.

He said that because the restoration is mostly a process of government, a lot of steps are added.

“Frankly, there’s a lot involved with the install and city permits, usually, because they’re all within the city of Toledo, you know, from road closures and things like that, and then where it’ll go, how long is it anticipated for the completion of the project, and then the eventual reinstall.”

It’s all part of Toledo’s One Percent for Art program, the 1977 ordinance that allocates the corresponding percentage of the city’s capital improvement budget to the purchase, conservation, and public education of art was the first program of its kind in Ohio and one of the first in the nation.

Working with the City of Toledo, the Arts Commission bids out the work to local contractors and organizes their transportation.

Flatlanders Sculpture Supply and Art Galleries of Blissfield, Mich., is handling the Art Tatum Celebration Column , which has seen chipping and other coating issues over its 15 years on display.

Repainting it means completely dismantling the sculpture, applying new coats and replacing worn rubber gaskets, before eventually putting it back together.

“It’s all these different piano keys that are all stacked up on top of each other,” Cook said. “So, we’re taking that completely apart, really, just to get to those lower sections.”

The Art Tatum column is one of several major Toledo sculptures undergoing repair.

Other sculptures under repair include Kabuki Dancer by Jerry Peart. Removed from Levis Square Park, 285 N. St. Clair St. during recent onsite renovations, the sculpture, which dates to 1984, has a reinstallation date set for spring, 2025. Landscaping issues at its original location have made it necessary to relocate the piece to an unreleased new home.

A time-consuming piece for its original artist, Kabuki Dancer , too, will need plenty of TLC, with corrosion repairs and a new coat of paint on the docket.

“Some sections are better than others, but it's just big and complex enough that I think it’s the right time to do the whole thing, so we can reset that timer on the paint and not have to be doing touch ups,” Cook said.

A third piece of public artwork, RDG Planning & Design’s Vessel , saw its typical restoration timeline derailed when it was badly damaged in a 2023 auto accident.

It was completed and installed pretty recently, in 2021, in the middle of the roundabout at Cherry Street and Manhattan Boulevard in North Toledo.

“Transforming as you circle it, the structure’s planes merge with voids, and angles converge with contours,” RDG says in a description of the piece on its website.

The piece, which is rich with symbolism about everything from Toledo’s glassmaking heritage to its early hospitals, is currently undergoing major repairs and refabrication, with no reinstallation date set.

Keeping within their annual budget means the Art in Public Places committee can’t accomplish everything it wants, but the Arts Commission has more renovation projects in the works.

Other public arts projects on the list include reintroducing lighting to The Flame in East Toledo, a 1976 sculpture that hasn’t had proper illumination for around 15 years, and enhancing the lighting on Blue Lupine from its downtown location on Summit St.

From Kabuki Dancer to the Art Tatum Celebration Column , “these are definitely some of our more beloved pieces of public art,” Cook said. “[We’re] definitely not surprised that we’ve seen a lot of comments and questions and people wanting to know what's happening with them.”