Whats left of a 'Welcome to Newark' music sign near Rt. 21/280
The City of Newark Division of Planning, in its glorious wisdom, sponsored a pseudo-RFP to enlist design firms, galleries, architects, anyone with a computer to come up with ideas and give them away for free to the city. And dozens responded! Dozens- the recession doesn’t take away people’s need for creative expression, just the money they get paid to do it!
They call it the Gateway Urban Design Exhibition. And damn, we hear some of these ideas are pretty good and might, i use the word loosely, just might see the light of day.
And its on display- for anyone to see, gawk at ,whatever…at Aljira-A Center for Contemporary Art-tonight.
A brief overview….This is Newark is an exhibition of proposals for marking the points of arrival to Newark and addressing the history and culture of Newark in the urban landscape.
Exhibition
Ok. We. Get. It.
Now tell us why we should care. What does this really mean? We are committed to finding out. SO, we’ll be there tonight, wandering around, twittering, investigating, taking PICS to report back to you, our fair readers. You who deserve ANSWERS.
In case you want to stop in tonight is the CLOSING. So its now or never kids.
6pm-8pm
591 Broad Street
June 9th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
I went opening night. I looked, I drank it all in, I ate their cheese cubes. There were some sucky submissions. There were some really good ones, too. Really, really good ones with a lot of vision, and a lot care put into them – care about the community and obviously attempting to address not just Newark’s “image”, but to address the needs of the people who live here and crave to bring back that elusive “quality of life” issue that almost everyone here on GlocallyNewark is pussy footing around, but not talking about in a very direct manner.
Ultimately what I walked away with was a head full of lovely visions of a possible Newark 10 years from now. Now, I’m an artist. I’m all about an art culture, and I’m all about creating an artistic community – but I’ve also seen in other places how those places, those destinations are created in areas that have been considered undesirable by the kind of people who have the money who ultimately are drawn to them – once they’ve been established. And there’s the rub.
So, what I’m really getting at here is that even though some of the flashy subissions were really cool visions of the big, beautiful future, they would take big bucks to finance, and until the really good, less flashy, less image conscious, more community oriented ideas (which, incidentally are lower budget) ideas are implemented and succeed it would be a sorry waste. Williamsburg is one of the ugliest places I’ve ever been. And everyone is flocking there. No one wants to come to a place with just pretty gates.