Yesterday’s discussion about Chicago’s absence from Businessweek.com’s ranking of top 10 cities for artists drew some heated responses, like this one from West Side, who commented, “since when did artists become a protected class?”
I’m not sure, West Side, but often the reason real estate types lure artists into large cheap spaces is because of the cool galleries, bars and coffee shops that come with them. This got me thinking about the sustained impact that art – not just artists – has on a neighborhood.
In 2001, the Chicago Park District and Boeing teamed up to bring the work of Seattle-based glass artist Dale Chihuly to the Garfield Park Conservatory. Two years later, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, assistant professor at the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science, conducted research into its effects on the community.
The subsequent report, Broken Glass: Community Impact Study of the Chihuly Exhibition on Garfield Park, was published in 2003 and concludes: “Phase I of our study offers important insights into the Garden of Glass exhibit that are not available from the prevailing, and media-induced ‘wisdom’ that this exhibit was an unmitigated success in spurring revitalization of the Garfield Park neighborhood.” I’m not convinced the Chihuly exhibit spurred any huge change in the neighborhood, either, but I’d say it did spark the interest of affluent homebuyers from outside the area.
For some good insight on how artist-led gentrification affects neighborhoods, check out Harvey Warren Zorbaugh’s The Gold Coast and the Slum: a sociological study of Chicago’s Near North Side (1935) and Richard Lloyd’s Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Post-Industrial City (2005). Both books describe how clusters of artists attracted developers, but then got pushed out as wealth moved in.