Page 105 - David Bermant Foundation

(continued)“Spindle lifts the auto out of its ordinary place, and by relocating it as we’ve never seen before causes us to look again—to question its priority and importance in our daily living. Is it an object for veneration? If so, should it be?”What better subject for art, Shuler put it, than the most dangerous thing you deal with on a daily basis? Public reaction was immediate and divided. “Spindle” became a landmark and a tourist attraction. People loved it. They were fascinated. Thousands attended a rally to preserve it when it was due to be knocked down and replaced by a Walgreens. Walgreens won out and “Spindle” is gone but it was in a shopping center after all. DWB challenged perceptions by inserting art into settings of working class commerce and he welcomed the controversy. In a voice that was both gruff and sprightly he said, “If you don’t like it enough to go into my shopping center, stay the hell out. I don’t care.” But he was also a businessman and a good one. He knew that having art in his centers attracted 30 percent more business than a shopping center without it.Despite that 30 percent bump in business, “There are much easier ways to make money.” DWB had a vision and a mission to take art back to the streets. In his gruff and charming manner, he swiped Art from the cabinets and walls and pedestals of socially remote museums and smacked it into the path of the every-day American. In his shopping centers, the public was exposed to art without taking a special trip up the marble steps of a staid and sanctioned institution. No official voice told them what is good, what is worthy, what is art. Love it or hate it, it was theirs to experience, for them and of them.104