Last week the City of Boston announced that they’ve decided on a new Chief of Arts and Culture, Julie Burros. On Monday, September 29, the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, stewards of one of Boston’s most engaging public spaces, announced that they too have landed a new leader to help boost public art and activity programming.
Lucas Cowan comes to Boston from the Maryland State Arts Council where, as Director of Public Art Programs, he was essential in helping push legislation that secured funding for capital projects and and construction. Prior to that, Cowan, like Burros, worked out of Chicago but as Senior Curator of Exhibits for the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture and Millennium Park in Chicago.
According to Crain’s Data Center, Millennium Park saw some 4.5 million attendees in 2012, the second most visited attraction in the Windy City after the Navy Pier.
“We are thrilled to welcome someone of Lucas’ caliber to join the Conservancy team,” said Jesse Brackenbury, Executive Director of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy. “The experience Lucas brings from his leading role at Chicago’s world-class Millennium Park will help establish the Greenway as a must-see destination for contemporary public art.”
Cowan is charged with building what the Conservancy refers to as “a forward-looking, innovative, rotating program of high-quality art along the mile and a half of parks.”
A significant part of that, Cowan told me, is understanding the technical limitations of the structures and the Greenway’s environment to create a natural showcase chock full of unexpected art the public never would’ve thought would be there.
Lucky for him, he’s working with a tabula rasa.
“The Greenway is one of the newest, outdoor, public spaces that basically has a blank canvas to it,” Cowan said of his vision for the 1.5-mile park. “I’m very excited to research and understand Boston communities and provide them with something they’ve never seen before.”
As aforementioned, Cowan spent significant time in Chicago’s public art and parks system where, along the way, he forged a friendship with Boston’s recently appointed Chief of Arts and Culture Julie Burros. Ditching Chicago for Boston, by way of Maryland in Cowan’s case, isn’t a trend Chicagoans need worry about.
But Boston, it seems, is the envy of many art professionals and artists in their own right.
“Boston is on the front steps of something bit that the art world will be looking toward,” added Cowan. “Anyone would be crazy not to want to be a part of that.”
Cowan has only been in town for a handful of weeks so, admittedly, he’s still getting the lay of the land. His vision for the future of the Greenway, though, in terms of innovation, installments, programming, and even works of the traditional variety, directly mirror what the Greenway is already teeming with.
Shinique Smith’s mural at Dewey Square, Seven Moons Junction, is absolutely “transformative of Dewey Square,” Cowan said, which is “so vibrant with so much to get lost in.” He loves working with the artists and helping to bring their works into fruition. Given the immense public support Smith received in overhauling the Dewey mural, and the collaborative effort it took to emblazon the wall with it, Cowan will most definitely be in his element – a creative one in which his artistic imagination runs with no bounds.
As someone with his finger on the pulse of beauty, craftsmanship, and societal values, Cowan is hoping to parlay his forward-thinking inspiration into art commanding a shock-and-awe factor the likes of which Bostonians have never seen, hoping to “fuse public art with cultural offerings for the city and give context to the artwork and to the environment in which its set.”
Cowan plans to make himself available for the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s public hearing to gather ideas for the Central Artery ramp parcels intersecting the park.
Understandably he’s got plenty on his plate – learning the ins and outs of Boston, after all, is a chore not easily, if at all possibly, accomplished – but he’s fully confident the hearings will eventually result in a project he can dive head first into.
“I think there’s always a way to integrate [public art]” he said of the parcel project. “I do hope there’s a role for me and/or the Greenway to help complement whatever those coverings may be in a way that’s publicly engaging.”
Welcome to Boston, Lucas!
