The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 166

Can public art be kept fit to a h. IW Kit- -m mwj mm mi: 1 a Sit, 1 I i I IllSfltiii PHOTO CYMIE PAYNE At the Harvard Square station, Gyorgy Kepes' stained-glass mural was once lighted from behind (above); now it is a blank blur. BART Continued from Page B17 shape, but some others are filthy, broken or vandalized. Karen Arpino, manager of the T's design department, says "We've made mistakes in our art program, but I like to learn from them and move on. Because we were one of the first such programs, we were one of the first to experience problems." Those problems range from simple dirt to complex mechanical problems in mobiles, and solutions have to be almost as creative as the art itself.

It can take a long time to fix an artwork, and almost no time at all to destroy it or make it dirty. The basic problem with caring for the MBTA's art, according to the T's assistant general counsel Esther Maletz, is that artwork is not a priority at the agency, and there isn't enough money available for maintaining it. "What the MBTA is doing is running trains and busses," she says. "Way down the line somewhere is the obligation to do things that have nothing to do with transportation." On the matter of cleaning and conservation, she says "Every year somebody says, why don't we do something about it. Various proposals are made and nothing gets done.

Funding for maintenance was not built into the programs. A lot of the art came from federal money, which paid for commissions and installation, but not to take care of the art afterward. "I think it would be nice," she continues, "if some non-profit organization said, 'Look, let us take over the maintenance of your art and we'd say, 'Oh, thank She also suggests an adopt-a-sculpture program. But Pallas Lombardi, who directed Arts on the Line and is now interim director of the Cambridge Arts Council, says that "Everyone at the knew from the beginning that they owned the art and that they were obligated to take care of it." The contract that Arts on the Line worked out between the and the artists .7... WSKffmmfXSmKfmif tflSlfiii u-- 1 1,,, i.n 1 I At Porter Square, Map Harries' calls for the to maintain the artwork, she says.

It states that the and the artist must agree on repairs and restoration, which "shall be based upon the recommendations and estimates of an appropriate impartial conservator." The contract also stipulates that "To the extent practical, the Artist shall be given the opportunity to accomplish said repairs and restorations at a reasonable fee." But for years artist Paul Matisse has been repairing his "Kendall Band" in the Kendall Square Red Line station for free. The "Band" is a musical sculpture that riders can actually play by pulling handles on the wall. "I've repaired it often, the way I take care of my children," the artist says. "It's a lot of work, and you have to do it between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m., when the trains have stopped. It was one thing when I installed it, but this is really arduous now.

But I don't care. So many people tell me how much they love the piece." Not officials, though, according to Matisse. "They've never even put up a sign indicating what it is and who it's by," he says, even though the contract calls for such recognition. As for contacting authorities, "I haven't the faintest idea who at the is responsible for the art," he says. "My relationship with the is exclusively with the trackmen, who are honest workers, and I have no problem with them." William Wainwright says he didn't have the chance to repair his "Lights at the End of the Tunnel," an aluminum and mylar mobile that once shimmered underneath the skylights at the Porter Square stop.

The removed the work in the summer of 1993, on two days' notice. "They phoned and said, 'We're taking it down the day after Wainwright recalls. Now he doesn't even know its whereabouts. "The T's got it somewhere, in a closet or a box," he says. Arpino says that the Wainwright work had a mechanical problem: It was so light it moved too much, so it had to be weighted with lead balls, only the lead balls kept falling off.

Afraid that one would drop on someone's head, the removed the piece. "We would like to re-install it," she says, adding that the metaphorical ball, although not the lead one, is in the artist's court. "Our engineering and maintenance people are waiting for him to suggest a solution." The situation with Porter Square's landmark "Gift of the Wind" by the celebrated Japanese artist Susumu Shingu a 46-foot-tall red windmill that twirls in the breeze is "scary," says Paul Dietrich, a principal in Cambridge Seven, the architecture firm that designed the station. Dietrich was also chairman of the Cambridge Arts Council during the heyday of Arts on the Line. "There was a recommendation when it was installed that it should be inspected and lubricated regularly because there's the potential for an accident" "We've written two letters to the reminding them it was important to do that," Dietrich says.

He's gotten no reply. The artist himself even solicited a letter from Joan Mondale to help "his cause. Mondale, an arts advocate whose husband Walter is now American ambassador to Japan, was a strong supporter of Arts on the Line, which began while her husband was vice-president She wrote to the Cambridge Arts Council, asking them to help Shingu's cause. The Council, meanwhile, hasn't been able to extract a response from the T. Arpino contends that "Our engineering and maintenance people have been going back and forth with the artist about it We've been trying to get an estimate from him on how much it would cost to maintain it He hasn't come up with a figure, and we can't come up with funding for it until he does.

We do know we need to get up there and make sure everything is working correctly. When it comes to a safety issue, the is extremely careful and quick to respond. If our people thought the work was unsafe, it would come down tomorrow." If the is sometimes passive about communicating with artists, waiting for them to take the initiative, the same can be said of some artists themselves. Morgan Bulke-ley, who lives in the Berkshires and says he hasn't seen his mural in over a year, says he thinks he had a contract with the but Td be hard-pressed to say where it is." Bulkeleys 1982 Newbury Street mural casts New England worthies -T Ur tv- Sponsored byACURA GLOBE JA22 FESTIVAL WEEK AT THE CLUBS Scuttert Jan dub, Oeunie Guest Suites, Boston 8:00 A Roy Ayers Ubiquity Wednesday June 21 The Regatta Bar, Charles Hotel, Cambridge 8:00 1 Roomful of Blues Friday June 23 Ryles, btman Square, Cambridge Wildest Dreams Friday June 23 MAftow Jazz dub, 99 Ba Squar. SomervWe Hal Crook Nick Brignola Quartet Saturday June 24 June 20-25 GLOBE STAFF PHOTO MARK WILSON bronze gloves have been stolen.

soumscrcaruw HWMWI me cowouy 4 the BerWre Phone envelope plus Centet 136 infomubon cal The Boston Gtobe of The GLOBE STAFF PHOTO MARK WILSON its possibilities, if works can't have moving parts or materials any more fragile than granite. Morgan Bulke-ley says he decided not to enter one public sculpture competititon because the rules on materials were so stringent that "You couldn't have built anything except a steel pyramid." i The ultimate blame for the state of the art lies with the people who deface and vandalize the public art that, through their taxes, they've actually helped pay for themselves. Public art is a target for public slovenliness, irresponsibility, ignorance whatever it is that makes someone try to sell a motorcycle by gluing an ad for it on top of a mural, as has happened in the case of the Bulkeley piece next to Tower Recordsn Newbury Street. (The phone nunv ber of the motorcycle's owner is m-eluded, of course, and when I called Ray, his response was "I know there's a painting there, but emy one puts stuff over it And I didn't use glue, like a lot of people It's hard to see why anyone would damage art as gentle and appealing as William Keyser's benches, which are anything but in-your-face. The long, undulating seats introduce organic form into a cold, concrete; rectilinear setting.

Made of golden wood, they also introduce warmth! But they've been abused, not just by pigeons, but by people who have written on them or hacked into their surfaces with knives. The benches, which the artist treated with several coats of epoxy and a varnish with Ultraviolet light inhibitor, have only been refinished. once, in the late 1980s. But they should, says the artist, be refinished every four years. 5 People waiting for a bus in HaTj vard Square used to look across the drive into "Blue Sky on the Red, Line," Gyorgy Kepes' wall of bril; liant cobalt which shone in the din setting like a rose window in a cathef dral.

Sun makes cathedral windows, glow, backlighting did the same for; the Kepes. But then the lights blew; Again, Arpino says the is workmg on fixing the piece. The knew the bulbs would burn out and so there, are pivoting panels that allow access to change them. But the didn't anticipate that the actual fixture3 would expire as well, hich they have. The piece, which hasn't been lit for months, has to be dismantled for repair.

Meanwhile, travelers waiting in that part of the station face an eerie, dead stretch of black, as if the enn TTolf VmA mvno out ams in contemporary urban situations, and weaves in themes of the natural world relating to the man-made. But much of the imagery is currently obliterated by stickers and posters. The has cleaned the mural in the past, the artist says, and when he created it, he sprayed on a tough coating designed especially for subway trains: High-pressure water is supposed to wash off most debris. But no one has washed the painting recently. Unfortunately, "It doesn't take a lot of people to destroy a mural by slapping gooey stickers on it," the artist says sadly.

Artists whose public art pieces are in distress could get help -through, say, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, a group of local attorneys willing to donate time to help artists. But sometimes artists seem willing to accept defeat, or too busy to devote large amounts of time and energy to battling government bureaucracy. Some also feel they lack an advocate within the system, especially since the death last year of Charles Steward, the T's chief of planning and construction. "He was our main supporter," says Mags Harries, a public art veteran whose "Glove Cycle" was commissioned by the for the Porter Square station. "Now there's no one there to facilitate things." Harries' bronze gloves are one of the delights of the Porter Square station: They crop up in odd corners, and even on the escalator.

But, she says, "Three pieces have been stolen over the years. I've approached the about replacing them many times, but I get no response. I have the original molds here; it's just a matter of sending them to the foundry and getting them installed." The determination of the vandals astonishes her. "To get at one work, they actually had to break a wall. The pieces are triple-bolted; it's hard to imagine how some of them have come out but they have." Arpino says replacing the gloves is "a matter of funding, and how far our responsibility goes if a piece is stolen." The art works that have fared well tend to be those made of exceedingly tough materials, like David Phillips "Porter Square Megaliths," sliced boulders with cast bronze inserts, or works positioned so potential vandals can't get at them, like Joyce Kozloffs "New England Decorative Arts" tile mural high on a wall in the Harvard Square station.

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