Calgary’s mayor said Thursday he hasn’t formed an opinion on a controversial piece of public art installed at the new Bowfort Road interchange, but defended the process by which it was selected.
“I haven’t seen it,” said Naheed Nenshi. “I’m going to reserve judgement until I get a chance to see it in real life and it’s finished. Because, as you know, it’s not done yet.”
“I think it’s a bit dangerous to make judgements on something that’s not done, that you haven’t actually seen or experienced.”
READ MORE: City of Calgary unveils Blackfoot-inspired art at major northwest interchange
WATCH: The City of Calgary has unveiled it’s newest public art installation as part of the Bowfort Road overpass project.
The artwork, titled “Bowfort Towers”, was unveiled last week and has inspired ridicule, derision and anger from some in the community.
Nenshi defended the process by which the artwork was chosen, saying as far as he’s concerned city policy was followed properly.
“The city administration completely followed the policy to the letter, to the T, of how public art is supposed to work.”
“It’s important to remember there’s a committee of seven people, six of whom are volunteers, who make those decisions,” Nenshi said. “I don’t like the fact that these volunteers have sort of been in line for a public lynch mob on all of this. That does bother me because I don’t like putting volunteers into that line of sight.”
“This is what they felt made sense for that location.”
READ MORE: Tsuut’ina Nation wants to see Bowfort Towers art installation redesigned
Some in First Nations communities have expressed concern over the artwork looking similar to traditional burial towers. Earlier this week, the Tsuut’ina Nation alleged the project had not had any input from First Nations and said they wanted to see the artwork redone.
“In this particular case, there was not just a traditional knowledge-keeper but a particularly skilled traditional knowledge-keeper whose expertise is in the field of Blackfoot archeology and symbolism, who had been consulted on this particular project,” Nenshi said.
“The city followed the Indigenous policy consultation to a T on this.”
“Should that consultation be different? Maybe,” said Nenshi. “But certainly I can’t fault my city administration colleagues because they did exactly what the policy asked them to do.”
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