A Percent For the Arts
Be An #ArtsHero stands in full support of initiating “A Percent For the Arts” on a federal, state, and local level.
Percent for art policies generally apply to any municipal capital improvement project where a determined percentage of the total project budget is set aside for public art. These policies also address how the money is to be spent on the acquisition and commissioning of public artworks.
Overall there is little variation in the structure of these ordinances. In most cases the municipal arts council is responsible for the administration of the funds and the artwork, but a few cities leave the power in the hands of city government.
History
From 1934 to 1943, the Section of Painting and Sculpture in the United States Department of the Treasury followed a policy requiring one percent of the cost of federal buildings to be applied toward art and decoration. In 1959, Philadelphia adopted the first such municipal ordinance in the United States. Other jurisdictions followed suit, including Baltimore in 1964, San Francisco and Hawaii in 1967, and Seattle in 1973.[5][6][7]
Current Applications
More than half of US states now maintain percent-for-art programs[8], including Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte, North Carolina; King County, Washington; Los Angeles, California; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Phoenix, Arizona; Portland, Oregon; San Jose, California; Tampa, Florida and New York City, New York.
On the federal level, since 1963 the General Services Administration has maintained the Art in Architecture Program, which allocates one-half of one percent of construction cost for art projects. Los Angeles and Tampa extend the reach of the percent for art ordinance to include private commercial development in addition to municipal projects.