Critical Investigation: Wayfinding in Delaware Park
by Amanda Joy Anderson
Chloë Bass, Wayfinding, 2024.
Courtesy of the Artist and Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Photo: Brenda Bieger.
After an unexpected injury early last summer, I started walking each morning in Delaware Park, relishing the simplicity of this routine in the face of such disruption. My dog and I got to know other early morning walkers, their dogs, and the blue heron perched at his morning watch by the lake. I took notice of small changes in the park around us, minutiae raised to exciting developments under our quiet, daily viewing. In a short time, it began to feel like I was healing through this practice—a prescription from designer Frederick Law Olmsted himself, perhaps: “The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it, tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system.”
Sometime between one morning walk and the next, more than just tree branches and heron feathers started to change. A metal frame suddenly stood by the Ivy Bridge, and on the ridge just past it, there appeared a bigger one. HOW MUCH OF HOPE IS FORGETTING? the mirrored sign read. I walked up to it and around it, surprised to see a black metal mesh back. I kicked one of its poles. Heard the noise it made. Looked at the fresh cement around its posts. Tried to stop quantifying “hope” in my mind. Did hope need to be quantified? Ever? I used my phone to search: Buffalo MIRROR COPING. Chloë Bass. Newly sponsored by the AKG. Public Art. Temporary, but for a year. More large metal signs appeared. Within days, my walks changed from quiet, self-guided contemplations to interrogations by a series of seemingly urgent prompts that cut through the landscape. These included deeply personal, capitalized questions such as HOW MUCH OF LIFE IS COPING? and HOW MUCH OF LOVE IS ATTENTION? The probing and personal nature of the questions within an unassuming location felt discordant to my experience of art. I was not coming to the park to see art. While I might have enjoyed the installation within an institutional setting, here, deep within the park, it felt assaultive and, depending on my mood, unwelcome. I began to avoid the work entirely and to wonder at length about how it came to be. 1
***
After a summer of daily walks, spurred by my reaction to Wayfinding (2024–25) in Delaware Park, I want to answer this question: How engaged can Buffalo’s public be in Buffalo’s public art curation? I will not call myself an art critic as much as an art appreciator who is trying, perhaps for the first time in my lifetime as a Buffalonian, to understand the municipal and curatorial processes behind what we see and are told is public art in Buffalo.
***
With casual inquiries, I quickly found that people had a lot of feelings about the piece. “Delaware Park went through a breakup,” was one of my favorite Reddit comments. The local news featured residents asking how this had come to pass without their input. Others covered it, literally: I may have been one of two witnesses to an early morning glue stick addition of “WITH THESE SIGNS” to each large question posed. Artist friends had many things to say, none they dared to share publicly.
Local Olmsted historians were quick to decline commenting publicly on the installation but directed me to some of the landscape architect’s own comments. In a 2022 Audible Original course on "The Enduring Genius of Frederick Law Olmsted," Adam Rome, a professor in the department of environment and sustainability at the University at Buffalo, argues that Olmsted fought deeply to defend the mental health aims of his park design:
He thought the calming effect of parks required a pastoral landscape. A true park couldn't include anything that would take your mind away from the serenity of the scene. No museums, no ballparks, no fancy restaurants—those were important to cities, but they didn’t belong in a pastoral retreat. So Olmsted fought battle after battle to protect his parks against other people's ideas of how they might be designed and used. 2
Chloë Bass, Wayfinding, 2024.
Courtesy of the Artist and Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Photo: Brenda Bieger.
Another well-published Buffalonian scholar pointed me toward a series of papers by Olmsted and Calvert Vaux on “The Proper Function of Statuary in the Park” later published in Frederick Law Olmsted, Landscape Architect, 1822–1903. The designers give specific and exhaustive instruction for the curation of statues and art within Central Park, the placement of gates and spaces for temporary locations, and the overall protection of the art of the Park so as to keep the landscape uninterrupted: “If a park, as a whole, is to be considered as a work of art, it is in this direction, then, that it most needs to be carefully protected; for the demands of the special art of which it is an example must always have the first claim to consideration.”
Source after source showed me that Olmsted left specific instructions and a history of extensive advocacy for maintaining purity in the parks he designed. His and Vaux’s stance on statues in Central Park, penned over a century ago, leave little room for curatorial misinterpretation. Of particular note, and in direct contrast with the placement of many of the Wayfinding pieces, are their thoughts on the importance of uninterrupted views:
It is probably impracticable to lay down any rule of more definite application in this respect than that no position shall be given to a statue in which it shall be a prominent object from a distance, or in which, when regarded from the front, it will divide or obstruct the view of any of the few expanses of the Park. 3
When I began to read further into installation materials and the application to the Buffalo Arts Commission, expecting to see some of this historical interpretation of the site addressed, I was surprised to find it largely absent. There was no analysis of Olmsted and the landscape art within which Wayfinding would be installed in the AKG’s online description of the project or the extensive application to the Buffalo Arts Commission. Oddly, a snippet from a review of the St. Louis-based version of the installation was attached, which described in great detail Park-Like, the location of part of Bass’s second installation of Wayfinding. The review called out the curatorial sensitivity in siting Wayfinding in this urban park and former vacant lot in St. Louis. The specificity of the sites selected by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation organizers, in contrast with the lack of similar intentionality for the installation in our own legacy park, felt like a curatorial error compounded by a lack of critical oversight by administrators tasked with review Since Wayfinding is the first installation of its kind in Olmsted’s Delaware Park in over a century, I had no modern, local point of comparison. I began to reflect on other temporary installations in other Olmsted parks and, of course, was reminded of The Gates, the massive, costly, infamous Central Park installation of thousands of steel frames with saffron-colored fabric by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The installation is dated 1979–2005 because it took, in short, over twenty years to be realized. A 2008 documentary on the project largely focuses on coverage of the public forums and failed approval processes on the road to realization, with many calling the addition of art to the landscape art of Olmsted and Vaux a distasteful irony. One commentator in the film says it was like Picasso painting over The Last Supper. A spectator says, “I hate it. It’s just an example of uh, what people can do when they got a lot. And it just shows you what you can’t do when you have nothing.” The off-camera interviewer probes, “But isn’t it for everybody?” The man quickly responds, “If I shit on your lawn, alright, and I say it’s beautiful, is that for everybody?” When asked, “You think this is the equivalent of shit on a lawn?” the man pauses as he looks across the landscape, his eyes suggesting it was once a familiar respite, now filled with orange metal gates being installed, before he concludes with a simple, definitive, “Yeah.” And that exhibit was only up for 16 days.
***
I set out to speak to parties responsible for the Delaware Park installation. Emerson Barr, Executive Director of the City of Buffalo Arts Commission, walked me through the application process, including what is visible on the city website, by phone. “Mr. Ott always does his due diligence,” he told me, speaking of Aaron Ott, Buffalo AKG Curator of Public Art, who submitted the application for Wayfinding. “I can’t think of a time when we denied one of his applications.” He also told me that the Commission has many vacancies—half of its allotments are empty. When I asked him about his skill set for the job or those of his fellow members, he simply told me that these positions were appointed, and if I was interested in filling a vacancy or suggesting someone for a position, I should get in touch with my Common Council member. “Email me,” he said, when I asked about how a member of the public might convey concerns about a piece of public art. “Or call 311.”
Later, I spoke with Catherine Gillespie, Buffalo Arts Commission Chair and member of the AKG’s Public Art Committee. I learned that, as a temporary installation, this piece did not require a community committee, as a permanent installation would. When I asked how evaluation of the installation was processed and how or when feedback was accounted, Gillespie said, “Well most people share negative feedback, not positive, so even if we get 200 complaints we won’t really know if it represents the accurate sentiment.” I wondered at the origins of this statement but did not ask. It seemed to me that the installation and approval of this piece called for collaboration, but now that it is up, the groups lacked a collective entity for processing responses. I asked if the feedback that seems to be gathering in separate spaces deserved a collective audience at the Commission. “Sure, we could talk about it in a meeting.” There is no instruction online for adding agenda items to a Commission meeting nor is there a publicly accessible URL or physical location specified for joining meetings.
Chloë Bass, Wayfinding, 2024.
Courtesy of the Artist and Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Photo: Brenda Bieger.
I next reached out to the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy (BOPC). After some back and forth, Zhi Ting Phua, Director of Engagement and Inclusion, responded in writing to a list of questions I had sent via email. “BOPC strives to find a balance between maintaining the integrity of Buffalo’s Olmsted-designed landscapes and the modern needs of today’s park users.” Acknowledging a change in leadership between the initial request and installation of Wayfinding, representatives confirmed that the installation was presented for public comment in an Olmsted Community Alliance meeting in fall 2023. I reviewed the presentation, which showed images of the mirrored signs, a photo of the artist, and proceeded to a standard agenda item titled, ironically enough, “Wayfinding,” which addressed sign revisions planned across all parks. To my query regarding a historical assessment, BOPC confirmed that its Design Review Committee reviewed the installation proposal, but it did not specify the Committee’s membership or processes. Representatives confirmed that feedback is encouraged, received, and tallied but did not indicate a process for response, if any.
Since the County is listed as a financial supporter of the installation, I spoke with David Bojanowski, Director of Constituent Services and liaison to the AKG. He confirmed that while the County pays a portion of the salaries for Ott and others in his team, it has no influence on the installation. He confirmed that feedback had been received, describing constituent sentiment as “puzzled” and “miffed.” I then asked about the new County initiative, Arts in Public Places. He confirmed that the public could access meetings but did not know if public comment on agenda items was part of the process. When he followed up on that detail some weeks later, his email simply said, “We are not pursuing a public comment period in our meetings. We do however welcome any comments and/or questions to our email address.” When I asked him how to engage with the County to learn more about arts funding, he encouraged me to contact my legislator.
Aaron Ott, Curator of Public Art at the Buffalo AKG, spoke to me by phone. My primary interest was understanding his decision-making about this piece, which he told me he had learned of in 2021. He described how, by the time it became available, it had grown from the three components originally installed in New York’s St. Nicholas Park to the 48 installed in Delaware Park. “I started to ask, as we all did, ‘How can we amplify the cultural spaces that go beyond our campus?’” Speaking about collaboration, shared spaces, and the cultural landscape, Ott went on to connect the increased audience allowed by the AKG’s renovations and the expansion into “part of a larger cultural conversation” that Bass’s piece could bring.
When I asked about the process for public engagement, specifically around the curatorial decision to place art within a historic Olmsted landscape, he paused. “I don’t want to point fingers, but I relied heavily on the Conservancy for that.” Ott offered many other explanations for the roll-out and feedback that the installation had received. He shared regrets about missing the opening and not being able to engage in more public forums. He went on to talk about the logistical barriers to public art in Buffalo, calling out the limited budget, operational challenges of the Commission, and thwarted desire to do more ad hoc projects, perhaps in the spirit of the Buffalo Pothole Bandit (a local who fills potholes with mosaic art). Standing between him and many of his wishes is “a bureaucratic logistical barrier I can’t face.” I asked him about the power he has as the main purveyor of municipally stamped public art in Buffalo. “We don’t want to be a monolith,” he responded. "Catalyst and thought leader, yes. But public art sequestered to AKG is not a great sign of cultural vitality and not enough.” When I described a “curatorial mismatch” between the Wayfinding project and Olmsted’s explicit, historical instructions about statues, Ott replied, “It doesn’t make me feel good to upset people, but it does feel good to figure out how to do better.” He encouraged viewers to submit comments via the AKG website, calling it another dataset to consider.
***
A simple web search will show you that many cities with public art have public art evaluation guides. Some with rubrics. Others with clear stakeholder rosters. Phrases like “community engagement,” “collective connection,” and “open forum” are prevalent. There are steps outlined on how to engage with the process. Who is in charge of it. When they rotate in and out of their leadership and oversight roles. Ixia, a UK-based organization that describes itself as “the public art think tank,” has published an extensive public art evaluation guide with a matrix tool for assessing value across artistic, social, and environmental spheres. The available policy and procedure for the placement of public art in Buffalo is an undated six-page document that makes no mention of public engagement. With Buffalo Arts Commission members serving into their second decades in positions without transparent procedures for appointment, zero public insight into art evaluation, and no clear inputs for public engagement, transparency is optional, curatorial monopoly normal, and haphazard decision-making standard. Transparency and public engagement are only achievable by those who are dedicated and over-curious. All this again prompts the question: Is Buffalo’s public art really meant for the public?
Chloë Bass, Wayfinding, 2024.
Courtesy of the Artist and Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Photo: Brenda Bieger.
My most recent walk in Delaware Park was with my friend, the artist MJ Myers. We wandered to the far field where HOW MUCH OF BELIEF IS ENCOUNTER? cut through the landscape as sharply as the freeway nearby had mercilessly divided the city years ago. He stopped to look at a nest inside a lone birdhouse, remarking on the pattern on a stranded feather. “I don’t know,” he said, staring up at the distance, ripe with fall colors. “Nature holds all the wonder and inspiration we could ask for,” he said. “I saw that Erie County has a call for proposals in a park I love. I spent time there recently trying to think of something that would add to the space, and I just couldn’t. These spaces have been set aside and should be kept clear of man-made clutter and clever concepts. There’s nothing to add—I say, let the art live with the creatures who make it.”
***
At the end of the summer, I moved from Buffalo to Harlem. My young son and I retreat to nearby Central Park every day, where we truly feel sanctuary from the busy, droning beat of the city. In the release I feel upon entering its gates, I think of Olmsted and his work to provide this for city dwellers. How would I feel if HOW MUCH OF LIFE IS COPING? cut my view on the East Meadow? This escape feels more urgent in New York than in Buffalo. I am dependent on the space it provides because I have no other space. I come to it for this singular purpose and to see the demand Olmsted made of it to be singular so many years ago. This has changed my view of public art completely. What purpose does it have and where? Is there a necessity, as Olmsted believed, to advocate for its absence?
We recently visited the High Line in Manhattan, which is a public park known for its unconventional public art campaign. My son loved the current installation on its famous plinth, Dinosaur (2024) by Ivan Argote. This huge replica of a pigeon perches over the street, transforming a common sight into a celebratory tourist attraction. And that was exactly what it was. I sat and watched viewers for some moments as my son played on wooden stairs beside me. People came, took photos, looked for brief moments, left. No one appeared to be surprised by this mammoth installation or confused by its purpose. It is an indulgent piece of art, meant to attract people to a space that self-consciously defines itself as an experience. It is not a utility, like Central Park or Delaware Park, and this allows for its mission to be oriented toward tourism. The Bass piece would seem a fitting provocation here.
In the end, it is about context as a critical aspect of curation. In respect to museum curation, I will let the curators work and critique curatorial effort when I intentionally seek it as a solicitor of an artistic experience. But I think about Olmsted now more than I ever did. Is the landscape artist not worthy of the same deference as the one collected by the museum? The blurring of the curatorial lines by public art, especially public art in Buffalo, especially in a precedent-setting moment for Delaware Park, deserves critical public engagement.
Editor's note: Since the completion of this article, sometime between a walk in December and a walk in January, the author noticed that the Wayfinding signs within Delaware Park, all but those directly adjacent to AKG, had been removed. Black metal posts that had once held the mirrored installation signs remained, blending in with the seasonal poles meant to mark path boundaries in instances of high snow. When asked, the Conservancy reported that the signs were removed due to public vandalism. Aaron Ott of the AKG also confirmed this by email, calling the change a reduced installation and saying: “The work on AKG’s campus will remain through the summer.”
Amanda Joy Anderson is a lifelong Buffalonian who remembers when it was possible to sneak into the Albright-Knox from the entrance facing Hoyt Lake. She has loved art and Buffalo, as distinct entities, for as long as she can remember. She works as a health services researcher in New York City.
Chloë Bass, Wayfinding, 2024.
Courtesy of the Artist and Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Photo: Brenda Bieger.
Frederick Law Olmsted, “Preliminary Report upon the Yosemite and Big Tree Grove,” in The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: Volume 5: The California Frontier, ed. Charles E. Beveridge (The University of Virginia Press, 2022), https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=OLMS-print-01-05-02-0014-0003.
Adam Rome, The Enduring Genius of Frederick Law Olmsted, narrated by the author (The Great Courses, 2022).
Frederic E. Church, Calvert Vaux, and Henry G. Stebbins, “Report of Committee on Statues in the Park,” in Frederick Law Olmsted, Landscape Architect, 1822–1903, ed. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and Theodora Kimball (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928), 491.
