PROJECT OVERVIEW:
The Fort Worth Community Art Center Courtyard Gallery Plan establishes exhibition goals, artist selection and review processes, and funding strategies for a new exhibition initiative to be administered by the Arts Council of Fort Worth in association with a permanent untitled public artwork by artist Kris Pierce sited in the exterior courtyard of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. The plinths, or pedestals, are designed to allow for temporary exhibition of 3-dimensional artworks. Together, the plinths and the Fort Worth Community Art Center Courtyard Gallery Program Plan will fulfill a recommendation included in the Fort Worth Public Art Master Plan Update (2017): to “embrace new initiates and partnership, including … temporary art” that “provide opportunities to experiment and to engage the public and artists in new ways”i. An extension of the Center’s galleries, the Courtyard Gallery will provide a prominent outdoor venue for temporary sculptural artworks in one of the most architecturally significant Cultural Districts in the United States.
HISTORY On June 13, 2016, the Fort Worth Art Commission approved a Project Outline to select an artist to design and implement permanent plinths for the courtyard of the Fort Worth Community Art Center. The Outline also recommended to develop a process for future exhibition programming including input from the Fort Worth Art Commission’s Gifts and Loans Committee, the Fort Worth Community Arts Center’s Exhibition Advisory Panel, and the Arts Council (including Arts Center and Public Art) staff for presentation to the Fort Worth Art Commission.
On March 22, 2017, the Fort Worth Art Commission approved Kris Pierce’s design for three cast concrete plinths with integrated attachment systems for the garden courtyard at the entrance of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.
On May 6, 2019, the FWPA Gifts & Loans Review Panel reviewed the Fort Worth Community Art Center Courtyard Gallery Plan and unanimously endorsed it.