Fantle gives the Bronze Fonz back story

“Bronze the Fonz.”

Bewilderingly, this simple phrase has rekindled Milwaukee’s on-again, off-again debate about public art.

On one side is the art community, with illuminati ranging from MARN Executive Director and Hotcakes Gallery owner Mike Brenner to Milwaukee Art Museum CEO David Gordon to Brooks Barrow, owner of a gallery of the same name, protesting the proposed life-size bronze statue to be installed on Milwaukee’s Riverwalk. On the other side is Dave Fantle of Visit Milwaukee, ersatz patron organization of the piece, working in concert with Dean Amhaus and Spirit of Milwaukee. In what can probably be best categorized as a clumsy PR strategy, Dave made a very enthusiastic, very public announcement about the impending arrival of the leather-jacketed 70s TV icon, assuming that people would understand and embrace the installation.

I say it was clumsy PR because in the end, what should have been a simple addition to the many attractions of our Riverwalk has become contentious, with Brenner and Barrow loudly threatening to leave the city and Gordon imploring (in a very genteel way, of course) Visit Milwaukee to see reason and keep the Fonz off Wisconsin Avenue. In an email exchange of my own with him (which I chose not to copy to the known universe), I asked him for clarification of Visit Milwaukee’s motives with the piece, why it was announced as a fait accompli and what, if anything, he had done to connect with the art community in making his decision. His responses felt pre-rehearsed to me, doggedly breezy and optimistic. Polite but firm.

I wasn’t satisfied; email is a pretty pathetic tool for meaningful discourse, so we met to discuss this whole crazy affair. He was seated at a table at Mocha when I arrived, holding a printed, marked-up copy of VITAL managing editor Amy Elliott’s recent anti-Fonz blog. We went over it in some detail, each of us probably carrying certain assumptions about the other’s viewpoint. He wasn’t happy, and I must admit that at first I wasn’t really concerned about his discomfort. I maintained to him that the issue wasn’t the statue itself, but the feeling that we so rarely commission public art these days in Milwaukee and this Fonzie thing came out of nowhere, with no discussion, no open bidding process and no effort made toward community buy-in. In short, the whole thing was lacking in transparency, a thing most people don’t utilize when it’s there but that everyone decries when it seems not to be.

In response, Dave explained in greater detail his position and the genesis of the statue itself. Now, the whole thing makes much more sense to me and in fact is no skin off anybody’s nose. I asked Dave if I could publish some of his comments and he agreed. Perhaps they will shed some light.

In a nutshell: a while back, Dave Fantle and Dean Amhaus looked into TV Land’s sponsored program of erecting statues of TV icons in the cities where their programs took place. There’s one of Mary Tyler Moore in Minneapolis, of Bob Newhart in Chicago, of Ralph Cramden in New York. You get the idea. So Dave and Dean met with TV Land. It is their job, after all, to draw positive attention to the city, and in communities where these statues had been erected, the city-derived PR value had exceeded an average of $3 million each. That’s pretty cool.

Things went well, progressing all the way to the plans being drawn for the statue and Milwaukee’s share of the funding being mostly secured from corporate and private donors (the original price was much higher than $85,000) when a call came from TV Land. Bad news, they said, we’re re-branding and pulling Happy Days from the airwaves. So it’s a no-can-do for now on the statue. We’ll get back to you if something changes.

It’s an understatement to say the news was disappointing. A lot of work had been done and the support of the donors (Harley Davidson, CBS 58 and others) had been enthusiastic. So Dave decided to see if Visit Milwaukee could finish it without the network. They accepted bids from “four or five” area sculptors, chosen for their credentials and price range (not through an open bidding process), selecting Gerald Sawyer, who’s done other public art sculptures locally. The money is coming in and the statue will be installed in 2008.

That’s it. Cost to the public? $0. Benefit? Well, Dave lent me a binder with hundreds and hundreds of print, radio and TV clips from India to Canada, from the Tuscaloosa Farm Report to Forbes. Most importantly, Dave stresses, these aren’t clips about 26% poverty or a broken school system or hyper-segregation. Nor are they sweetheart placements about our “beautiful lakefront,” “renowned art museum” or other features cities typically tout to sell themselves. Nope, this is simply for fun, a light chuckle at the end of a harrowing newscast. So far the media value (a formula used by PR folks to assess how well their campaign performs) is close to $3 million and unveiling day is still far off. Look for at least one of the major morning TV shows to do a piece on it then, which alone will put the value over the mark.

Amy states in her editorial that this isn’t about art, but about marketing. And she’s right. It’s not supposed to be art. It’s supposed to be for fun, a reason maybe to walk from the convention center to the Riverwalk if you’re in town on business or an amusing photo opp with your kids or friends, maybe something to tell your sister about when you get back home to Akron. It’s really only art in the sense that it will be a sculpture, hopefully well-done, hopefully sturdily installed. In 100 years the Fonz may have as little face recognition as Pere Marquette does now. And that’s okay.

I still maintain that Visit Milwaukee, Spirit of Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Seven and other organizations charged with boosterism and economic development in our region haven’t the greatest track record of community engagement. I believe this is because they have a near-sighted understanding of what community is. Having sat in a number of gatherings for these organizations, I believe their intentions are altruistic, but like any other business or industry, they can rely too heavily on their established network of contacts and sources. It creates insular thinking, as well as a sense that if the people around you are aware of what you’re doing and approve, then everyone who matters is aware and approves.

That’s a mistake. In this case it backfired, whether Visit Milwaukee wants to acknowledge it or not. In reality, they were well within their rights and are doing something harmless and fun that will probably bring a lot of pleasure to people over many years. But perceptually, they operated without regard for an affected constituency, in this case the art community. It’s easy to keep your head down when you have so much to do, but it’s critical to come up for air anyway. You never know who’s going to be there when you surface. VS