Prominent museum heads in the United Kingdom are calling for greater discretion in the commissioning of public art pieces. They say the latest batch of sculptures are "monsters".
"The 'free-for-all' in tasteless, poorly executed public artworks must be halted, museum and gallery chiefs say."
"Marjorie Trusted, senior curator of sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, said that many commissions were 'disappointing, old-fashioned and awkward' and Tim Knox, director of Sir John Soane's Museum in London, dismissed them as 'horrors' – 'Frankenstein monster memorials'."
"'This free-for-all needs to be regulated and I'm worried about the sheer proliferation of these Frankenstein monsters.' Lobby groups, he said, were deciding that they needed a statue to commemorate someone and pressurising the authorities into erecting a memorial. 'Over the last few years we've seen tens of new sculptures erected in the centre of the city. It's almost reached epidemic proportions. These are not sculptures by well-known blue-chip artists because there don't seem to be many of those.'"
FULL STORY: Time to rein in ‘Frankenstein statues’ that are stalking streets, say art curators

Alabama: Trump Terminates Settlements for Black Communities Harmed By Raw Sewage
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Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

The 120 Year Old Tiny Home Villages That Sheltered San Francisco’s Earthquake Refugees
More than a century ago, San Francisco mobilized to house thousands of residents displaced by the 1906 earthquake. Could their strategy offer a model for the present?

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Contrary to popular assumptions, public transportation has far lower crash and crime rates than automobile travel. For safer communities, improve and encourage transit travel.

Report: Zoning Reforms Should Complement Nashville’s Ambitious Transit Plan
Without reform, restrictive zoning codes will limit the impact of the city’s planned transit expansion and could exclude some of the residents who depend on transit the most.

Judge Orders Release of Frozen IRA, IIJA Funding
The decision is a victory for environmental groups who charged that freezing funds for critical infrastructure and disaster response programs caused “real and irreparable harm” to communities.
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