Chattanooga has over 190 pieces of public art. Here’s more about that.

As you walk down Martin Luther King Boulevard to grab a bite to eat, your eyes are drawn to the 42,000-square-foot “We Will Not Be Satisfied Until” mural on the AT&T building. When you turn right onto Houston Street, you look both ways and catch a glimpse of the Bessie Smith Cultural Center and Chattanooga African American Museum. After you’ve closed out your tab at Bitter Alibi, you have a hankering for dessert at The Ice Cream Show, and as you carry your waffle cone to the Walnut Street Bridge, you take a second to admire the Ed Johnson Memorial.

The city of Chattanooga’s public art collection is all around us, totaling almost 200 pieces, according to Austin Center, the city’s public art collection specialist.

“If you look at any other public art administration around the country, I think we’re second to none,” Center says.

The Collection

The city’s public art collection includes 197 pieces, half of which are outdoors, according to Center. Art found on streets and sidewalks (such as the dancing steps on Frazier Avenue) is not included in the official collection.

The art doesn’t end at the city limits, either, as there are programs that work to place art in various neighborhoods throughout Hamilton County.

“There’s artwork all over, from Hixson Pike to Brainerd, all the way to the foot of Signal Mountain, out past Lookout Mountain and just all over town,” Center says.

As the collection specialist, he’s responsible for maintaining the art.

When he started the job just over a year ago, Center began cataloging all of the pieces in the collection and studying conservation reports to learn how to handle upkeep. In doing so, he created a hierarchy to help determine the pieces he should prioritize and work on first. He considers the purchase price of a piece, its location, how “iconic” it is and its historical value when placing it into this hierarchy.

An iconic piece, in Center’s eyes, would be the massive Martin Luther King Jr.-inspired mural on the AT&T building. Some historically valuable pieces include the Cherokee bronze sculpture in the Aquarium Plaza and the Ed Johnson Memorial, which Center says shed light on Chattanooga’s dark history.

(READ MORE: Ed Johnson memorial unveiled beside Walnut Street Bridge 115 years after lynching)

Another way Center considers the value of a work is how it serves its neighborhood.

“When artwork is put into a certain community, it raises the appreciation of that community,” he says. “Underserved communities that might have pieces of artwork are very valuable, and they may not cost the most or be the most historically important pieces, but the value that shows to that community is another way that I look at things.”

Upkeep

Maintenance decisions include determining when a piece has run its course. If there is a safety concern, if it’s too outdated to find replacement parts or if it’s too expensive to bring the piece back to life, the work may not be worth keeping in the collection, Center says.

To keep up with weathered pieces and similar maintenance tasks, he works with other city departments to get the job done — from engineering to transportation, work-zone permitting, parks and outdoors and the library staff.

“There are pieces that have the same materials, but every piece is a little bit different,” Center says.

And there are restrictions when it comes to maintenance. For instance, the blue rhino at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre can only be repaired in 65-degree weather and above, due to its materials. And other large, colorful sculptures, including the Albert Paley pieces — such as the Blue Goose Hollow sculpture on the Riverwalk — cannot be worked on until the pollen has subsided, Center says.

As an artist himself, Center can take his understanding of the materials of each work and help build a nuanced approach to taking care of the collection.

Accessibility

Carmen Davis is the senior director of Chattanooga’s recently formed Office of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy. She oversees Public Art Chattanooga as part of that office.

When Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly created her department, Davis says it was to enhance the accessibility of art in the city. Part of making art more accessible was bringing the entire public art collection online in 2023.

It may not be physically or financially feasible for some people to view all the pieces in person, she says, so the online catalog offers the opportunity to explore the collection to those people who otherwise wouldn’t get to see it.

A challenge to making public art more accessible throughout Hamilton County has been bringing pieces beyond “the downtown footprint,” Davis says, meaning that there isn’t as much infrastructure for public art in the surrounding suburbs.

To address the gap between downtown art and the city’s surrounding areas, Davis is working on bringing new pieces and art-related events to other places in the county, as well as technology like an app that would offer more information to people about the city’s art.

“We’re looking at utilizing [both online and in-person methods] to really make sure that we’re being intentional about accessing all of Chattanooga,” Davis says.

Art activation, or having people interact with the art, is another way the city is working to provide access and education about the public art collection, says Elizabeth Carriger, manager of Public Art Chattanooga.

On April 23, the city held “Awakening at Moonrise” to bring attention to the new Moonrise sculpture at the Wheland Foundry Trailhead at the Tennessee Riverwalk. The free evening program included yoga and a sound bath under the sculpture, followed by a nature walk.

“There are really exciting ways that you can program public art,” Carriger says. “So looking at ways to engage people with the collection is at the top of my list.”

Impact

When looking at the numbers behind the art world in Chattanooga, Davis says it makes sense that the mayor is investing in the sector.

ArtsBuild, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Chattanooga, recently discussed the results of an economic and social impact study by the Americans for the Arts that gave insight into the economic stronghold the arts have on Chattanooga.

The study used 2022 data and found that the nonprofit arts and culture industry in Hamilton County garnered over $191,000 in total industry expenditures that year. This included money that arts organizations generated and spent, in addition to what people spent when attending arts events, says James McKissic, president of ArtsBuild.

“You might buy a ticket to something, but you also might get a new outfit, you might pay for parking, you might go out to eat beforehand, you might have to pay for childcare, so all of those funds generated are as a result of a particular arts event that people are attending,” he explains.

McKissic says the arts contribute to other industries in the county but are often overlooked as a contributor to the economy.

“More than 3,000 people are working full-time in our arts and culture sector here in Hamilton County, which is a larger workforce than a lot of our big employers,” McKissic says. “But I think because we’re not all under one roof, people do forget that there’s an arts and culture workforce out here that’s supporting our economy.”

The “hidden” workforce pertains to the public art seen around Chattanooga. People may drive by a mural or sculpture and think of the artist who was hired to create it, but they may not think of the person who was paid to work on the permitting for the piece or the person who laid the concrete base for the art to stand, he says.

(READ MORE: How Chattanooga’s murals attract, create and promote business)

Chattanooga Leads the Way

Before returning home to manage Public Art Chattanooga, Carriger was working in Washington, D.C. on the city’s public art and spent time working on Arlington, Virginia’s public art program.

After gaining perspective on the public art scenes in different cities, Carriger says Chattanooga’s public art collection and program stand out.

“It’s really an example for other municipalities in the Southeast and even nationally. I would say we’ve got a strong reputation,” Carriger says.

Once she got the job as Chattanooga’s public art manager, Carriger says she started to connect with public art administrators throughout the Southeast and in Tennessee and that they looked to the Scenic City as an example, particularly small cities interested in developing their programs.

Something Carriger says she would like to see more of in Chattanooga is the front-end thinking about public art from developers. In Arlington, she said developers would make a financial contribution to public art when creating new infrastructure, or they would incorporate public art on their site.

Chattanooga Sculptures

People may also associate public art in Chattanooga with the Sculpture Fields at Montague Park. The Fields are not part of the city’s official collection, as they are funded by the 501(c)(3) Sculpture Fields at Montague Park organization, says Kim Adams, chair of the Sculpture Fields board of directors.

Entrance to the park is free of charge, as the organization leases the land from the city, classifying it as a public park.

“It’s part of the community. You’ll see people out there every day walking their dogs, people painting the sculptures, schools using it,” Adams says. “I think the value that the Sculpture Fields add to Chattanooga is that they house different artists from all over the world.”

Whether you’re looking at a sculpture made from recycled tires by Chakaia Booker or a metal sculpture by Mark diSuvero, Adams says park visitors are exposed to a variety of artists and international art forms.

John Henry, a sculptor and the founder of the park, founded the Sculpture Fields in 2016 and passed away in 2022. As he developed what was once a brownfield into the Fields, sculptor friends of his donated their sculptures, Adams says. The sculptures the park doesn’t own are contracted out by different artists and stay onsite until they’re sold or replaced with a new sculpture by the artist. Some artists will write the Sculpture Fields into their wills, leaving their works to the park when they die.

Like Carriger, Adams works to bring opportunities for art activation to the Sculpture Fields. Each October, there is an event called “The Burn,” when a sculptor creates a three-story sculpture that is set on fire in the park during a festival event. In April, the “Sculptures in the Sky” kite festival takes place there. While some are focusing on kites, others come to paint the kite fliers and sculptures. In summer 2023, students from a local dance program came out, and each chose a sculpture to freeform dance in front of, basing the dance on the feelings evoked by the sculpture.

Future Thinking

Center says he sees public art pieces as places for people to come together. He says the office is working on building education about the collection and setting up tours of the works for people to enjoy, along with new signs to help viewers better understand the art.

Patience is key to the city’s public art development, he says, because there are many pieces to take care of in the collection and processes that take time to develop as they build programming.

“The beauty of public art is that it’s freely accessible. It’s always open, 24/7,” Carriger says. “We want to focus on making sure the collection exists as an ongoing resource and part of the cultural life here in Chattanooga.”

To view the collection, visit artworkarchive.com/profile/city-of-chattanooga-public-art/collections.