Steve Erenberg, the artist who created a series of images for the ten arches next to Peekskill Brewery, has already achieved one of the main objectives of art – to engage and elicit response from viewers. The reaction to his images has been swift and passionate, raising multiple issues and a palette of opinions.
Erenberg is part of a group of waterfront business owners who showed the drawings to members of Peekskill’s Common Council at its July meeting. The group said they wanted to replace the fading LIFE images created by Peter Bynum for an art exhibit that closed eight years ago. The business owners are also motivated, they said, by the city’s request for proposals to develop a building on the parking lot in front of the arches.
Erenberg presented his proposal as a gift to the city. The business owners will raise the funds for the project and, in fact, have already secured the necessary dollars to realize the murals before this fall. They refer to the murals as a ‘temporary’ installation, since they believe there will be a building on the site in the near future.
Interestingly, Erenberg’s career has relevance to an action the Council took later that evening. Erenberg spent 35 years as a marketing executive, hired to create ‘personalities’ for locations both locally and internationally. At the council meeting, he explained that creating a ‘buzz’ is a surefire way to bring the community’s attention to a specific site, something he considered as he created the images for the Water Street location.
Later that evening, Council members voted to spend $174,000, which will be reimbursed by the state DRI grant, to hire a company to ‘brand and market’ Peekskill.
It’s pertinent to the conversation to note that Erenberg has decades of experience doing what Peekskill hopes to achieve by hiring a marketing and branding company. This gives one reason to pause. Ostensibly, the city is being offered a gift from a talented professional – which could result in the very thing the city is looking to accomplish with the hiring of a branding company.
Because of the strong response from people who are opposed to the murals for a variety of reasons, it’s easy to find fault with the proposed gift. If we separate out personal opinions about the art and look strictly at what can be accomplished with this donation, we may be less inclined to dismiss them as ‘not appropriate’ for the space.
Granted, Erenberg’s work may strike some as edgy and cartoonish. However, the aim of art is to educate and awaken people. Not all art has to create soothing, comfortable feelings. Erenberg has explained the history and origins of his imagery, showing them to be part of a century-long tradition of folk art and outsider art. In this light, they become more understandable.
However, there are multiple layers to this proposal that make it complicated. Aside from the admittedly quirky imagery, this pitch raises the concept of privilege. When people who have the resources to bring a project to fruition waltz into City Hall with a proposal they want, it gives rise to the perception of “paying to play.”
The business owners proposing these murals are successful entrepreneurs who are accustomed to coming up with ideas and executing them in a timely fashion – the very antithesis of how government typically works. They also have funds readily available to make their vision a reality.
It was tone-deaf to exclude from the conversation the established group of artists in the community who have toiled for decades in creating protocols and standards for art. It’s understandable their reaction would be less than welcoming.
As long as there are artists creating art, there will be divergent opinions. When a city as diverse as Peekskill is asked to weigh in on art, the saying of Abraham Lincoln comes to mind: “You can’t please all the people all the time.” It’s the task of leaders in government to explore every aspect of the gift and its ramifications, and make the best decision on behalf of the city and its residents.
There are several potential silver linings in this fraught scenario. This is an opportunity for Peekskill to expand its knowledge of what art can be and do for a community. This proposal can be the catalyst for the Council to establish clear guidelines around time limits for installations and create curatorial protocols for selecting future installations that will appear in highly visible locations.
Peekskill’s great strength is welcoming those who may not fit elsewhere. With that belief in mind, it’s imperative to accept this proposal for a very specific time limit. It’s an art installation that already has people paying attention and engaged.
