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Richmond council votes to give itself veto power on public art

At a city meeting in June, council voted to give itself the power to approve or refuse any piece of artwork on public or private property as part of new developments.
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At a city meeting in June, council voted to give itself the power to approve or refuse any piece of artwork on public or private property as part of new developments. They also voted to give themselves the ability to “to consider restrictions to local artists.”

Previously, council had to approve the public art plan on both public and private lands, but only had veto or approval power of the actual art pieces on public lands.

Under this process, public art submissions for private land went through a review under the leadership of a public art consultant and a selection panel made of representatives from the city and community stakeholders, staff and the Richmond Public Art Advisory Committee.

In a letter sent to its members about the matter, the Richmond Arts Coalition raised several questions including, “if the developer is funding the public art piece and it will be part of the development that will be sold privately, why should council have to approve it,” and how can council “ensure that Richmond has a wide variety of public art, not just one style.”

Even so, council voted for giving itself discretion to refuse artwork on private property and city staff are now reviewing the arts approval process. Couns. Derek Dang, Alexa Loo and Linda McPhail were all opposed to the motion.

“I’m not an artist,” McPhail told the Richmond News. “We probably all have a different idea of what is art and what is good art…I think it’s really important that we have a process that takes us out of the equation, that involves artists, that involves members of the public and I think we had that.”