Bronze the Fonz
Henry Winkler
Originally uploaded by chelsea tobe
Urban Milwaukee and Fresh Coast Ventures, LLC would like to throw their support behind the “Bronze the Fonz” campaign. The urban, pedestrian-friendly location of the statue on the riverwalk will only give Milwaukee visitors one more reason to stay downtown, walk downtown, and spend their money downtown.
A couple grumpy art gallery owners in Milwaukee apparently are not seeing how the statue will encourage visitors to “stay downtown, walk downtown, and spend their money downtown”. This would inevitably help their business by increasing foot traffic in the area, but that doesn’t seem to matter to them.
Most important to these art gallery owners is the fact that the statue is an icon of mediocre public art. Milwaukee Art Museum Director David Gordon also appears to be upset that the bronze Fonz might interrupt the development of a fancy new public art development coming to Wisconsin Avenue in a few years (of which I can’t seem to actually find any details other than the artist is Janet Zweig,).
No one is going to make fun of Milwaukee for having this statue and every first time visitor is going to want to see it and get their picture taken with it, just like that “bean” that our neighbor to the south has.
Build the statue. It’s only going to help people have one more thing to do in downtown Milwaukee. Игровые Автоматы Онлайн
The proposed Fonz statute reminds me quite a bit of the Mary Tylor Moore statue on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis (click here for an image)
I believe the Mary Tyler Moore statue works well as a piece of public art because the subject (Mary), its location (on street level, right in the middle of the one of the main commercial corridors in the downtown area), and its scale (life-sized rather than super-sized) really invite interaction. A surprising number of people look at/pose with/or stare at the statue and get their photos taken with it. It seems like it is a lot of fun for many visitors.
My guess is the statue draws new visitors to the downtown area (in the same way the Cows, Snoopy characters, and the other series of city statues do). In that context, I think these types of statues work well.
Will the Fonz be high culture/art? Well… I watched Happy Days, so I’m not sure what that says about the target demographic.
Sure, the Fonz may not have been as instrumental to the progress of humankind as say, an important soldier or historical elected official (occasional subjects of statues) but I can relate to him. I think it’s an appropriate place to start when considering the subject of an art project.