Call for Qualifications for Art Elements

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Lex Arts, Inc.: Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden
IMMAG
LexArts
161 North Mill Street
Lexington, KY 40507

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Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden

Request for Qualifications

Project Summary

Isaac Murphy is considered to be one of the greatest race riders in American history by the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame and one of the nation’s first professional athletes. He essentially opened the door for African American athletes long before Jesse Owens in track or Jackie Robinson in baseball.

Born in Bourbon County, KY in 1861, Isaac Burns Murphy rose from humble beginnings to become an African American Hall of Fame jockey and a pioneer in his sport. Murphy soon moved to northeast Lexington and started his racing career at the age of 14. He eventually became the first jockey to win three Kentucky Derbies and the first jockey to win consecutive Derbies. During his career, Murphy won 44 percent of his starts, a success rate that has never been equaled.

The Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden will celebrate Murphy’s accomplishments and those of other prominent African American jockeys who put horse racing in Lexington on the map. This urban art garden will be located in Murphy’s native East End of Lexington—near the same area where Murphy and other riders honed their skills at the Kentucky Association race track. It will serve as a railhead to another legacy project, the Legacy Trail, that will connect downtown Lexington to the Kentucky Horse Park in rural Fayette County—a symbolic connection between the location of Murphy’s livelihood and his final resting place.

The Project Site

The project site is at the intersection of Third Street and Midland Avenue, and is about a third of an acre. Midland is one of Lexington’s busiest thoroughfares and is one of the main gateways into downtown; on average, 20,600 vehicles pass the site daily. Third Street is at the heart of a current revitalization effort including the Lyric Theater (Historic Black Theater). The site is bordered by a sidewalk as well as streets and has high visibility from both pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The site is within walking distance to the original site of Lexington’s historic Kentucky Race Course which was relocated in 1930s to the Keeneland Race Course on Versailles Road to make way for public housing – Bluegrass-Aspendale.

The Garden will re-spirit and help to revitalize a part of Lexington that is rich in history and heritage. It also will serve as a source of education and awareness concerning local African American contributions to the equine industry and provide an engaging cultural center and green space for Lexington residents and worldwide visitors to enjoy.

Time Table:

Postmark Deadline for Qualifications Wednesday, 01/06/2010
Selection of Finalists Wednesday, 01/13/2010
Proposal Development January – March
Artist(s) Selected Friday, 04/09/2010
Site Prep and Construction April – August 2010
Dedication Friday, 09/17/2010

Eligibility:

• Professional artists and artist teams with a track record of successful public art installations.  
• Artists who are comfortable with and energized by community engagement in the development of concepts and plans. 
• Have conceptualized and executed projects in excess of $100,000 
• Demonstrated ability to work well with other design professionals including, but not limited to, landscape architects and engineers. 
• The Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden Committee and LexArts are committed to a policy of providing opportunities to people regardless of race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, creed, religion, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, or age.  
• While an artist’s place of residence would not be a determining factor in the Committee’s decision-making process, the Committee would be favorably impressed with the inclusion of Kentucky’s artists, writers and/or poets on the creative team.  

Please submit Proposals through Cafe or to LexArts, 161 North Mill Street, Lexington, KY 40507.
Questions concerning eligibility and/or compliance with guidelines may be directed to LexArts by calling 859.255.2951.

Statement of Qualifications:

• Letter of interest (typed, font no smaller than 11 points, 2 pages maximum): should include artist/teams approach to public art especially with regard to community participation and engagement. Provide relevant history addressing comparable public art projects especially those that focus on history, and honoring unsung individuals. 
• Resume/Curriculum Vitae – teams must submit one per member 
• Professional references 
• Visual documentation of past realized projects: please submit on PC readable CD in jpeg format. Use visual image documentation form to describe images and your role in the project. 

Evaluation of Submissions:

An artist selection committee will be convened to select up to five artists to submit fully developed proposals. The Committee will be comprised of arts professionals as well as IMMAG, LexArts and community representatives.

Each finalist will be compensated up to $1,500 for a fully developed proposal. Also, limited funds would be available to assist with travel and lodging during the proposal development period.

Community Participation:

Residents of the neighborhood that surrounds the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden were consulted at the very beginning of the planning process. Throughout that process, citizen voices guided conceptual and design decisions. An imperative was the final result: construction and programming of the completed Garden must remain true to that citizen vision of celebration, education, activity, and sustainability.

In 2009, in an effort to grow awareness of the Garden, the Committee hosted two significant “friend-raiser” events which were attended by nearly 500 people from across the city. These events resulted in greater community interest and activity and the establishment of a “Friends of Isaac Murphy” fund at Blue Grass Community Foundation.

As a result, there will be high expectation for the community to be involved with regard to the selection of artists and in contributing to the art-making process. Such involvement may range from consultative to participatory. At this time, the Committee does not have any preconceived notions of how this is to be accomplished, that will be left to the selected artists.

The Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden and LexArts reserve the right to refuse any or all entries and are not responsible for loss of or damage to application materials. If you wish to have materials returned, please provide a postage-paid, self-addressed envelope. Correct postage is required for the return.

Links to Useful Information:
WWW.LexArts.Org
WWW.LegacyCenter.Ning.Com
WWW. Lexingtonky.Gov

An application can also be obtained by download by clicking here

African-Americans, Where are You?

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

(CHICAGO, IL - January 12, 2009) What is it about thoroughbred racing that makes it like ice hockey to African-Americans? Although black jockeys and trainers integrated the sport about 150 years before Willie O'Ree strapped on skates for the 1958 Boston Bruins, today - in the time of Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th president, horse racing seems as welcoming to blacks as Harry Reid was to Roland Burris.  Not one of the leading organizations has an African-American on its board or in an executive or upper managerial position. The Jockey Club is a prime example of how white males with Southern roots and Ivy League backgrounds continue to dominate the sport. The Breeders' Cup Ltd. and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association follow suit. Even the Thoroughbred Racing Association, an organization composed of almost every notable track in the country - 41 in all, doesn't list an African-American in the general manager's position at one of its member racecourses.   "I can't really speculate on why there aren't any African-Americans in these organizations," said Keith Chamblin, NTRA senior vice president of communications and industry relations. "I would venture to guess this has been prominently a male-dominated sport for many years," he continued, lapsing into compounded non sequitur by praising his lily-white employer for having women in two of its top five positions.
  No inference is being made that the horse racing industry wouldn't admit African-Americans to its inner circles or even its grandstands, if an expression of interest was made by a black person with bona fide credentials. But, to date, occasions of such description rarely happen. As a nationality, African-Americans constitute nearly 12 percent of the population. Yet, blacks are under-represented in all areas of horse racing but the backstretch.

The current situation is not surprising to anyone who studies race - twice as many blacks as whites are unemployed, a higher percentage of blacks versus whites live in poverty, more are incarcerated and fewer graduate from high school. The socio-economic structure prohibits many African-Americans to fund the type of lifestyle that includes thoroughbreds. Money counts in this game and blacks don't have nearly as much money as whites have. Moreover, even as Obama advances to the most powerful position imaginable, the rules aren't the same for everyone, to say nothing of opportunities.

Compare, for example, the current situation in college football with college basketball. Although most college football teams field squads that are 50 percent black, only 3.4 percent of the coaches are black. This hiring deficiency was magnified at the end of the last season when an African-American coach, Turner Gill of the University of Buffalo, who turned one of the worst programs in college football into a champion, was passed over for head coaching jobs at Tennessee and Auburn in favor of two white men who had failed spectacularly in their previous assignments.

College basketball faced similar injustices 20 years ago. But leaders in the sport realized that many of the best high school players were black and had played for black coaches most of their lives and that hiring a black coach would give them a recruiting advantage. Today, 28.5 percent of college basketball coaches are African-American. Change doesn't happen because someone merely wills it.

For nearly 30 years, the industry has recruited new practitioners from the pool of graduates coming out of the University of Arizona's esteemed Race Track Industry Program. But the program has matriculated only one black student since January, 1991. It's an appalling statistic, especially in light of the fact that the university's general enrollment of blacks equates to the national average. At the same time, it's a good bet that nobody has offered scholarship money to introduce academically-qualified African-Americans to the horse racing program.

The North American Racing Academy, a school for jockeys in Lexington, Kentucky started by Hall of Fame rider Chris McCarron, has never had an African American student. The academy, with a composition of 80 percent females, is graduating only its third class and has only 24 students enrolled plus six interns. But Aimmi Knarr, Director of Program Facilitation, said no blacks have ever applied. Asked if she considered this curious, Knarr replied matter of factly, "I don't know why."

"We get students from parts of the country that have a thriving racing industry. Most of them know about the sport and like it," said Wendy Davis, an Associate Coordinator of the RTIP, somewhat troubled when reminded that her program has served only one shade of followers. But if you've never been to a racetrack, you may make the assumption that there's a ‘touch-me-not' aura," she speculated. If Davis is right, the RTIP may be off limits psychologically to the rest.

To this point, Chamblin said, "There is definitely a percentage of the population that thinks of the racetrack as a country club, but that percentage is no higher in any one demographic." He admitted readily that the industry is challenged to improve its following with many demographic groups, not only blacks. "I've never contemplated an ad campaign to reach African-Americans specifically, nor would I," Chamblin said. That being the case, maybe the NTRA should.

African-American fans are becoming as rare at some racecourses (Saratoga, in particular) as inner city athletes on a Major League diamond. Despite the downward trend, Chamblin has created generic ad messages that the NTRA's constituency can customize to suit its own purposes. As they should, some commercials feature multi-racial casts and typify the "Sport of Kings" as the sport of Everyman.

But the U.S.Census Bureau forecasts that, by 2023, whites under the age of 18 will represent a minority. By 2042, the entire country will be more African-American, Hispanic and Asian than Caucasian. Eventually, an entertainment that looks segregated will seem like a bleached out computer screen, especially to prime consumers.

For now, having an out-of-sync sport may not seem to be demographically concerning. But given where things are headed, soon the color of the skin of the man in the White House won't be the only thing that's different. Businesses unprepared for a post-racial America are destined to have niche influence, nothing more.

Written by Vic Zast

Vic Zast

From the perspective of being an owner, an industry pioneer in corporate sponsorship, a track president and fan, Vic Zast writes the "Destinations" column for The Blood-Horse. His five-star ratings of international events have shed light on racing in all corners of the globe - from England, Australia, Hong Kong, Dubai to Japan.

Vic is a regular contributor to MSNBC.com, a columnist for the Illinois Racing News and has written on racing for ESPN.com, National Public radio and The Age, Australia's leading daily.

Vic makes his home in Chicago and lives in Saratoga Springs in August.