Jing published an article in the National Museum of China Journal (she’s very accomplished) about McG’s relationship with the City govt and community. I arranged the following interview which Jing excerpted for her article. Enjoy, Robert.
R:
Mayor Huja, thank you for meeting with me to discuss the creation of McGuffey Art Center. We will soon be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the McGuffey School building functioning as a community art center. My Chinese intellectual friends who come here, including my wife, are very impressed with McGuffey Art Center. They find fascinating the partnership between the City of Charlottesville, which owns the McGuffey School building property, and an association of self-governing artists who occupy the building with 40 studios and 5 exhibition galleries. The artists enjoy rents far below market value in exchange for providing a wide variety of cultural services and outreach to the community. My Chinese friends are coming from their own governmental system, and they love to see that we have worked out a cooperative relationship between City Government and the free enterprise artists so that the arts contribute to the culture of our community and the life experiences of our citizens.
S:
You’re aware I have some paternal interest in this project. A long time back when I first came to connect with McGuffey, they were going to demolish it.
R:
Demolish McGuffey School?
S:
There was a proposal, which I inherited, to build over it. This would have been a stupid thing to do. We decided to partly develop it, and partly leave the building alone.
R:
When you first came to town you became city manager?
S:
City planning director.
R:
Were you here when Main Street still had automobile traffic?
S:
Yes. My first project was the Downtown Mall.
R:
To divert the traffic and make a walking mall?
S:
Yes. People used to tell me to go back to India with these ideas. Now they think I’m a genius. And they keep re-electing me. I don’t know why.
R:
So, is it fair to say that it was your idea to come up with the downtown mall in its current form?
S:
I wouldn’t say that was my idea alone. I was part of a group of people. An idea- what is a new idea? You know I was brought up in a boarding school in India- from my youth, you know what Main Street was? A mall. And it was a lot more than that. It was there for hundreds of years. It was not a new idea. It was a new idea to Charlottesville- because they were using cars in the street. So it was not my idea- the idea’s been there for a long time. I was the advocator of the idea. I promoted it to see that it works here.
R:
You grew up where the town’s center was a public walking area.
S:
There were roads that went around the center, for horses and carts.
R:
My wife is writing an article on McGuffey Art Center and submitting it to the National Art Museum of China Journal, which is equivalent to the National Gallery West Wing of the National Mall in D.C. So I’m really proud to say, if this article passes the edit, McGuffey is going to be written up and read by millions of people.
S:
It’s a good idea, and again it’s not a new idea, it’s been there many other times… when I first saw it, it was in Alexandria. There was a collective of artists occupying a decommissioned torpedo factory. It was there before McGuffey….So again… usually there are very few new ideas, there is a reincarnation of old ideas, many times. So this is one of those. But I believe in reincarnation.
R:
So you brought before City Council the closing of Main Street and bricking over of the mall.
S: Not just bricking, but the making of a public space for human interaction. It was to be like a public living room. Where we share. Community happens when people interact. It is our joy to interact.
R: When the first artists came to City Hall and asked to rent the McGuffey School and make an art center there… you were here before that?
S: Yes.
R: You witnessed them as they approached.
S:
Yes. West Main street between downtown and University of Virginia was very bad. If you tried to walk from one end to the other you could get assaulted…. At this time I was trying to revitalize West Main Street and I needed to bring people’s attention there. No bank wanted to give any loan on that neighborhood. So I said, “Well, if we had a mural there on a building then people will see it and they will talk about this place.” So we had a mural competition. The guy who won the mural competition, I found out a while later, he could not paint. He could draw a picture, but he could not paint. Now the real trouble was I’d already sold the idea to the City Council, they had money committed to it, and here I was. I asked a painter I knew if he would like to paint the mural, and he said, “Well my brother’s an even better painter.” I said, “Where is he?” And he said, “He’s in jail.” So I talked to the jailer and he said, “I’ll let him out, for the competition” So I told the artist, “If anybody asks any questions, don’t say anything. Here’s a wall for you, here’s the paint, pay your debt to society.” He did two, three murals, on West Main Street, morning glories.
So that’s how I first got involved with public art.
R:
Was the goal to do urban renewal? You said there was trouble on West Main Street.
S:
There were two goals. To bring activity downtown, and secondly, the artists needed a place work.
R:
Do you feel that the presence of McGuffey Art Center has been helpful in the economic development of the downtown mall?
S:
Yes, very much so.
R:
For the life of the local residents and citizens of the city, what do you see as the function of McGuffey Art Center?
S:
All of us like beauty. Beauty is not limited to rich people. When you see a beautiful work of art or beauty in nature, you admire it. And so this is a presence of beauty in the community. You cannot live on food alone. It is in all of us. We must get in touch with it in some way.
R:
Are you pleased with the way that McGuffey has evolved over the years?
S:
I think we have a much better partnership. Over the years I must tell you that there have been times when the city wanted to pull out, when they felt they were spending too much money and not getting enough. But now they don’t feel that way.
R:
Do you feel that the new bigger programs that McGuffey’s involved in, where the public comes on to the front lawn, are positive?
S:
Yes. Very positive. Because as you know, art happens not only in art centers. Art happens in homes, public spaces, anywhere. Art happens all over the place. So it is just as important to get it out of the room, out of the building.
R:
So, if we draw the public out of their work mode, and into the free atmosphere of the arts, that is the goal.
S: Yes.
R: Do you have an idea for the next step in the development of McGuffey Art Center?
S:
I’ve been talking to a few people, but I don’t have any great plans as such. I feel they’ve been doing fairly well. Though I think we could extend somewhat more. It would be good to go outside, bring in others to display their art there also.
R:
Different groups, we invite them in and put on exhibitions. For example, we had an exhibition of children’s paintings from Rwanda.
S:
I saw that. I think that connection with Rwanda and Africa is also very healthy. Because we also have our African American population who need to see their heritage represented in art, not just the art of the rich white population.
R:
The final formal question I have is: What are your thoughts on international cooperation and exchange? For example, at one point we hosted Poggio A Caiano from Italy and had them bring an art exhibit, and we also sent to them an art exhibit.
S:
We tried the same thing with Bulgaria but it didn’t work out. But we should do more of them, I think.
R:
I saw a display here in City Hall of various sister cities that Charlottesville now has. Do you feel that we should do more with our sister cities?
S:
Yes, I do. Because we already know those cities. Poggio a Caiano, Italy; Winneba, Ghana; Besancon, France; and Pleven, Bulgaria. There are connections, we need to build on those connections.
R:
Well perhaps someday we will have a sister city in China.
S:
We might. We probably should. There are more than a billion people, and they love art. I’ve been to China only once. It was very different, at that time there were no cars. It was in 1981 or 2. There were no cars. Mainly buses and bicycles. I went to Beijing, Shanghai, Canton, Guilin, Xian.
R:
Those were very early years. Soon after Nixon.
S:
Yes. Right after Nixon.
R:
So you saw Old China. But by then you had already overseen the establishment of McGuffey Art Center and the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville.
S:
Yes.
Submitted by:Robert Bricker and Yana McLaughlin, 8/29/2014.
