Voelz Chandler: Courthouse panel sees no 'Justice'

By Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Is it courageous or cruel to tell an artist creating a major piece for the Denver Justice Center that people who will be heading down to court aren't there to look at art?

Or that art in the complex that includes a jail and courthouse shouldn't be the type of art you find at a museum?

Those were two of the comments New York-based artist Dennis Oppenheim heard recently from the panel that selected him for the largest single commission the city has awarded since the Percent for Art program began in 1988: $1.2 million. That amount will be augmented by a second phase of smaller commissions, totaling about $600,000.

The art also should show, the panel suggested, a reverence for justice and help inspire the landscape architecture of the plaza between the jail and the courthouse. It also should create, the courthouse architect suggested, world-class art that spurs some tension between the art and architecture.

Oppenheim sat quietly during the meeting, soaking it in. It was his first trip here to learn about the justice center design since he was selected in December for a commission that entails pulling the complex together while creating a piece of art.

At that time, the same panel now briefing Oppenheim had chosen him - but not the proposal he brought with him.

They liked his thinking on the project, if not particularly the model for Lady Justice, a figural piece whose "skirt" mirrored the folded-glass facade proposed for the courthouse. (The city is still writing the contract at this point.)

After Oppenheim heard what his art was supposed to do, he told the panel what he wanted it to do.

"There are two zones of view here," he said. "There is the extraordinarily emotional substance of the justice system. But then there's Denver. And then there's the art world. And then there is the international art world."

As in: What's good enough for this project should be good enough for a museum.

But let's backtrack for a moment: How did the panel's suggestions strike him?

"In a way, he's right," Oppenheim said of the comment by Denver County Court Presiding Judge Andrew Armatas that people weren't going to the courthouse to look at art.

"Another place that often has a lot of art is airports, and people are so distracted. . . . There is this troublesome aspect to it, it's not like a museum where people are on their own time."

Oppenheim, known for discrete sculpture as well as dramatic and all-encompassing environments, was back in New York when we spoke. There, he can watch, every day, life go on at the family courts building across the street. He talked about that with the panel and said watching people go through the justice system - even from afar - had made him think about it. Down the street sits The Tombs, the city's most historic jail.

"It's safe to say, that at a courthouse, you could be totally distracted. That was part of the judge's statement."

But the piece needs a broader vocabulary - "Denver is bigger than the courthouse" - to make it register with the city.

The same holds true for the justice center itself. Of the design, he said, "I'm reserving my feelings till I feel it's come to rest. They're still in flux. . . . But my impression is that it is conservative. It's good, it will work, and everything will operate in a comfort zone, and that within that comfort zone there will be some nice treatments.

"But what are we to expect? What else is new? Is it supposed to be like a flying saucer? To come in like (Daniel) Libeskind and radicalize the whole project? As an artist, I'm operating in a different temperature zone, something that brings in a little bit of friction."

Oppenheim has begun to think about an installation that involves experience, bringing to mind the installations Flying Gardens for the Sacramento, Calif., International Airport and Bus Home at Pacific View Mall in Buenaventura, Calif.

At the justice center, the act of moving through the system plays a role. "(The work) would be the combination of bringing in transparency, largeness, profound scale, and strong and powerful reflective currents. These ideas involve people passing through a structure, not something to look at, but something to enter."

And if he has put Lady Justice aside, he has not cast off the idea of figural art.

"Abstract and minimal work to many people embody lofty or spiritual pursuits," he said, noting he had been a juror for projects where the consensus headed to the nonrepresentational.

"We aren't going to do that here. It's going to be a little bit different."

The latest . . .

at the Denver Justice Center project

• TIMELINE

Architects for the courthouse are integrating comments from a peer review panel before submitting their next designs to the city. Those will represent a phase called "50 percent design development" and are expected in mid-February. Architects for the jail were to turn in equivalent documents this week.

• DESIGN

Jail: The Hartman-Cox Architects and OZ Architecture design is more traditional, set across from the courthouse by a plaza for cars and pedestrians.

Courthouse: The klipp-designed element, meanwhile, is shrinking. It is now about 100 feet tall, still in glass and pre-cast concrete, but with a much more animated western facade to link to any future development toward Speer Boulevard. The eastern facade (and main entry) is a folded glass wall. The tallest piece of the building, as depicted recently, is a vertical glass element that shoots about 3 feet higher than the rest of the structure, on the western side.

• THE PANEL

The peer-review panel named in November to critique the courthouse design wound up its work on Jan. 19. Two of the three out-of-town members present, Bruce Kuwabara and John Ellis, said they would consider the courthouse design a "signature building," a term that has been tossed around during the justice center saga - especially when architect Steven Holl was still on the job. Areas in which panel members believe they made a difference include enlivening the western facade, collapsing more of the jury assembly room into the courthouse envelope and moving the cafe to the south, closer to the Golden Triangle.

• MONEY

No one at the final meeting for the peer review panel would say where the buildings stand on price, in relation to the construction budget. The costs previously have been stated at about $115 million for the jail and $99.1 million for the courthouse.

Mary Voelz Chandler is the art and architecture critic. Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677.