City officials in San Francisco have approved plans for a vast new public art park located on Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island, located in San Francisco bay. The project involves spending at least $50m on works in a variety of media that will be dotted around the 300-acre terrain.
The redevelopment of the area—which is led by the non-profit Treasure Island Development Authority and the city agency, San Francisco Arts Commission—is due to last 20 years. The organisers aim to raise $50m through a “1% for art” programme whereby private residential developers meet a fraction of the production and installation costs (up to 8,000 homes form part of the initiative).
Treasure Island was built to host the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939, when artists such as the US sculptor Ruth Cravath and the Mexican painter Miguel Covarrubias were commissioned to create works for the Pacific Unity sculpture collection. “A cultural legacy for the island will be established by the proliferation of new art projects and the intended reinstallation of the historic Pacific Unity sculpture collection,” a project statement says.
The island masterplan, which is posted online, includes a “curatorial framework” for the new art park. The name of the island should be a “source of inspiration” for artists and curators who are also asked to “consider the island’s unique vantage point in the bay, amidst the Bay Bridge, San Francisco and the East Bay, and the notion of art on the edge where the land meets the sea”.
The first three sculptures are due to be installed from spring 2019 at the Ferry Plaza and Building One Plaza on Treasure Island, and at Yerba Buena Hilltop Park. Other proposed locations include a former chapel, which could house indoor performances, and former Navy airplane hangars which may be used for film screenings. Artist residencies lasting three to six months on the islands are also in the pipeline.
Treasure Island was among the sites mooted for Star Wars creator George Lucas’s new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. But earlier this year, the film-maker opted instead to build his art and memorabilia institution in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park.
