Blogh: The Last Billboard, created by Carnegie Mellon professor Jon Rubin, has been posting messages by local artists to a billboard on top of a building in East Liberty since 2013, but last week marks the first time the building's landlord intervened. "There Are Black People In The Future" was posted to the billboard on March 3 and removed several weeks later.
2 comments:
While I am happy the message is aloud to go back up, I am still upset at the reaction and the way it was handled. First of all the technical reasoning bring the sign down in the first place was completely unnecessary. If they had a problem with people complain about the sign, why not just say that, why give a technical legal inconsistent reasoning for its removal? I think a bigger question is why did they not just wait for a town meeting to get it taken down. Im sure in a hast to calm the first people to complain, but people complain every day about something they don’t like. It does not mean every company changed their policies on a daily basis to accommodate every compliant. I think it was a rush to appease one small familiar group, rather than actually seen how the community as a whole feels about the community.
I think public art is always a hard thing to sell. How can you make anything provocative when your audience is anyone and everyone? Some public art is graphic or offensive that may not be suited for everyone who's viewing it. Now, I'm not saying that this billboard "There are black people in the future" is in anyway offensive or graphic or explicit. In fact, I like to think of this billboard as serving two purposes. It is a reminder to those who are part of the racial majority that they are not the only people on Earth. I also see this billboard as perhaps a sign of hope for those people of color who walk by and see it. It lifts those that see it by reminding them that this current racial tension can't last forever, and they will persevere. They will make it to the future. Regardless of what others tell them.
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