The challenge for Baltimore is to break down the barriers that traditionally have separated us culturally and economically.

Baltimore has the potential to grow a new creative, urban garden and I have a feeling that the seeds are being sown.

For Baltimore, which is a pretty good representation of American cities other than the big three, it may be that real success will require that art has to go beyond being a kind of (pardon the word) amenity, and this goes to Dave Troy’s comment. One key area of contemporary art is something called “social practice” that has artists involved with publics that are typically not art-educated contemporary art regulars. The Contemporary Museum has been a progressive forerunner in this area. Maybe what has to happen “next” is that the narrative about “how we hang together” is on the plate of the artists in this city, and should stories emerge that resonate, there won’t be anymore questions about the importance of art in our lives.

The Municipal Art Society went on to commission various artistic projects around the city, and to contribute to documents like the (ultimately unrealized) 1961 plan for a park in the Jones Falls Valley. They are also responsible (in a later incarnation) for the man/woman statue at Penn Station — which brings me to my next point.

Great public art can definitely feed the soul of a city. But I wonder if it is sufficient to have just *any* art, or whether art should be curated by those in a position to do so to help orient the city in a common direction.

One of the great tragedies of Baltimore is that we have lost a unifying narrative that bridges rich and poor, black and white, natural citizens and immigrants. As Randolph Roth has said, we lack a story about “how we all hang together.”

To the extent that a thriving arts community and public art in particular can help restore that narrative, should we be doing more to encourage the creation not just of art (which is good), but more art and an arts culture that helps us restore that common narrative?

The man/woman statue is widely loathed, and I think it’s because it’s art that tells no story, that really repairs nothing — with all due respect to the artist, we can do better.

I encourage you to look up the backstory of the Municipal Art Society. They were championing the same values in 1899; only then, we had not yet lost our way, or truly begun to face our society’s deepest challenges.

Today we have a wonderful opportunity to apply the highest aspirations of our forbears to the challenge of today. Let’s not squander it, and instead rise to the occasion.