The Lens too large for Ped Mall

Iowa City currently provides grants to subsidize the restoration of historic building façades. Two retailers have won Historic Preservation Awards for restoration of Clinton and Washington Street buildings. Iowa City should be recognizable to alumni and current residents. The oversized Lens sculpture proposal clashes with the historic feel of downtown.

Yes, we are an international community. But the British designer Cecil Balmond seems unaware of the many events that crowd the Ped Mall throughout the year: Arts and Jazz Fest exhibits, performances and activities for children, vendors and information tables for Homecoming and Gay Pride Parade, 2015 Christmas Market, Shakespearean previews by Riverside Theater, summer dances, drumming, magic tricks, readings, and political demonstrations, among others.

The three-story Lens would impose on the ambiance of the Ped Mall. Almost the height of the adjacent National Historic Register Paul-Helen Building, it will overshadow the public park space. The Balmond sculpture’s 30-foot width will replace a colorful planter of flowers and decrease the open space for much-needed shade trees.

The Balmond Lens will only complement the Park@201 high rise. The 2013 14-story TIF building was granted a special exception to cantilever 4 feet over the Ped Mall, beyond its legal property line.

According to its website, Park@201, a narrow sleek glass building is located on the Ped Mall. It is situated on the iconic Black Hawk Mini Park.

What is left of the “iconic” Native American mural? Nothing indigenous. Instead, an oversized Lens sculpture would impose on human scale.

Now, the city is asked to contribute 10 percent of the proposed sculpture’s cost. The 30-foot diameter Lens will dominate the space and hijack the Black Hawk Mini Park just as the high rise obliterated the last of the Native American mural. Will we lose our natural spirit so that those in high rises will have a sparkly circle to look down on?

The Black Hawk Mini Park had a theme of indigenous roots. Can we update a connection to history and the land? That connection could be lost to commercial branding of Iowa City. This proposed sculpture seems discordant and triple the size for this intimate public space. A 10-foot circle would be less obtrusive to the public use throughout the year of festivals and activities for children.

Pam Michaud

Young, gifted, and black: whitewashed

“Home to more than 30,000 students and some of the nation’s top scholars and researchers, the University of Iowa offers more than 200 areas of study on a vibrant and diverse campus”

There exists an experience on this campus that, despite the cheerful and pluralistic rhetoric that its administration is so fond of, happens to be marked by struggle, depression, and isolation. To be a black Hawkeye is to be pushed into the margins, vulnerable to psychological violence, tokenized, forgotten, exploited, and — in times of resistance — co-opted and quarantined. Experiences evidenced by the defense of KKK effigies and disconcern with exacerbated graduation and retention gaps, among other things.

There is no perhaps no more recent an example of this than in the case of the Young, Gifted and Black LLC, which black students designed and proposed to the university this summer. In the university’s inability (or unwillingness) to protect its black students from harassment, bias, and discrimination in the residence halls came also an inability to recognize that students have more than majors: They have heritages and histories.

From this deficiency came a ray of brilliance: Black students at the university decided they’d had enough and drew up a proposal for a Black LLC that would not only celebrate blackness but would provide black students with an environment for success at a PWI. Unfortunately, on par with history, from the moment it reached the proverbial hands of the administration, the long tedious hours of hard work on this proposal became co-opted and whitewashed for mainstream liberalism, not only effectively erasing the efforts of marginalized students from the narrative but also making their work ineffectual.

The Young Gifted and Black LLC will only provide justice if adhered to in its purest form. Anything less is a wash.

Matthew Bruce