I was in agreement with Rooney’s oratory for about 23.4 seconds and found the rest to be farcical and rather predictable. However, it was Rooney riding roughshod over a dozen sculptors by not citing their names while brandishing controversial pieces such as Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” as evidence of the tom foolery the public is subjected to that disturbed me the most. Though I admit to secretly wishing “Santa Fe Depot”, Serra’s plop-art located downtown in the form of six forged blocks of steel, would also disappear. I’ve fantasized about applying large round white vinyl dots to the face of these cubes to turn them into dice for a game of Yahtzee. Fortunately, a recent visit to the Eli Broad Foundation to witness Serra’s monumental painting disguised as a sculpture (“Band”), has convinced me it outweighs anything the Tilted Arc or Sante Fe Depot has to offer. But I digress.

Rooney half-heartedly went coast to coast highlighting public works by Franz West, Bernard Venet, Jonathan Borofsky, the above mentioned di Suvero, and Nam June Paik’s “Something Pacific”, which can be seen in all its glorious and unkempt disarray on the campus of UCSD. He put them all into the same sack, shook vigorously, and drew his conclusions like some Tarot reader. You could rightfully accuse Rooney of being biased, hopelessly out of touch, and more than just a little propagandistic in his determination of what is art – the (for some) obscure sculptor Jonathan Borofsky is a rather facile target. And so is another great sculptor, Richard Hunt from Chicago, who Rooney lambasts for his homage to the late Martin Luther King, Jr. with a piece entitled “I Have Been to the Mountain”. Rooney is entirely unfair to the long prodigious careers of both artists.

Perhaps some of this irreverence on the part of Rooney comes with age, if you believe the latest report published by the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) on Arts Participation 2008: Highlights From a National Survey which has “the largest drop in arts consumption from people ages 45 to 54”.* Rooney has to be well over 60. Despite the jesting and the admittance that he is a “no nothing boob”, Rooney joins the ranks of an endless stream of nay-sayers who dislike public sculpture, at least the modern stuff, and would just as soon see it hauled away. There is no moratorium on public sculpture, there is certainly less of it being placed, and no consensus on the degree of importance it plays in the public domain. Other than obtaining monumental status as in a landmark – Chicago’s Picasso and Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” or Iconic status as in Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” – public sculpture will continue to be judged by no nothing boobs. The real answer is to know if they’re right.

*NEA reports decline in arts audiences for 2008, Culture Monster and David Ng