CultureNOW - The River of Quintessence: Michele Oka Doner and United States General Services Administration

The River of Quintessence

www.micheleokadoner.com

Michele Oka Doner is an internationally renowned artist whose career spans
five decades. Whether in large scale architectural projects or intimately scaled objects, her work is fueled by a lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world. Her numerous public art installations include Radiant Site at New York’s Herald Square subway, Flight at Reagan International Airport and A Walk on the Beach at The Miami International Airport. She is perhaps best known for A Walk on the Beach. With its 9,000 unique bronzes embedded in terrazzo with mother-of-pearl stretching for over a miles at Miami Airport’s North Terminal, it is one of the nation’s largest public art installations. Her public work can also be found in federal courthouses, libraries, hospitals, universities, and parks throughout the U.S. Represented by Marlborough Gallery, New York, Oka Doner’s work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre, The Dallas Museum of Art, The Virginia Museum, The University of Michigan Museum of Art, The Yale Art Gallery, and Princeton University Art Museum, among others. Publications about her work include Natural Seduction (Hudson Hills Press, 2003), Workbook (Oka Press, 2004), and HumanNature (Edizioni Charta, 2008). Oka Doner’s numerous honors include the Pratt Legends Award and The United Nations Society of Writers and Artist’s Award of Excellence. A graduate of the University of Michigan School of Art and Design, she received a B.S.D. in 1965, an M.A. in 1966 and a Distinguished Alumnus award in 1994. She lectures widely, including a recent presentation on art and architecture hosted by the Yale University Art Gallery.

In December, 2013, Oka Doner completed installation of “Micco,” a massive structure combining architecture and art in a giant steel and concrete cave-like form that serves both as a monumental place marker at the center of the new city of Doral Florida, and as a pavilion and platform where citizens can enjoy cultural and civic events. In the next twelve months she will have solo exhibitions at Christie’s, New York, Marlborough Gallery New York, and at the Perez Art Museum, Miami.

A native of Miami Beach, Oka Doner lives and maintains a studio in New York City.

Courtesy of Michele Oka Doner

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Incorporating art in U.S. government buildings has been a tradition since 1855, when Congress commissioned Constantino Brumidi to paint frescoes in the committee hearing rooms of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. Today, the Public Buildings Service of the General Services Administration or GSA continues this tradition of commissioning fine art for federal buildings nationwide through its Art in Architecture Program, which mandates that up to one-half of one percent (0.5%) of the cost of constructing a federal building be allocated for works of art.

As a matter of public policy, the concept of dedicating a percentage of construction costs for the acquisition of public art dates back to the New Deal and the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, which was established in 1934. That program set aside approximately one percent of a federal building’s cost for artistic decoration. The program had nothing to do with New Deal welfare relief or make-work initiatives. It merely codified the nation’s longstanding practice of decorating its public buildings. Unfortunately, the concern for public art waned with America’s entry into World War II, and the program was officially disbanded in 1943.

The percent-for-art program reappeared 20 years later after President Kennedy’s Ad Hoc Committee on Government Office Space recommended that fine art be incorporated, where appropriate, in the design of federal buildings. But just three years after the Government Services Administration re-established it in the spring of 1963, the program was again suspended, this time because of budgetary pressures relating to the war in Southeast Asia and widespread apathy on the part of the general public.

Today’s iteration of the federal percent-for-art program takes its impetus from a presidential directive issued by President Richard Nixon on May 16, 1972 that once again espoused “a program for including artworks in new Federal buildings.” Taking its lead from the Nixon directive, the GSA reinstated the Art-in-Architecture policy that September, declaring “a fresh commitment to commission the finest American artists,” and the country has enjoyed a percent-for-art program ever since.

Today, hundreds of GSA-commissioned works of fine art enrich federal buildings in every part of the country.

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Artist
Michele Oka Doner

Collection
United States General Services Administration

Dates

Installed, 2001

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Description

The River of Quintessence is a rhythmic field evoking the Rio Grande. It adds an organic element and a sense of site to the formal structure of the Courthouse. The River is created by a flow of millions of particles of embedded green glass, embraced at its borders by mother-of-pearl. It shimmers, reflects, and captures the translucent nature of life-giving water. By varying the scale of these crushed marine shells, the work of art evokes the geology of the region: soil, rock, water, and the dram...

Courtesy of Michele Oka Doner

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Location

Daniel Russell U. S. Courthouse
1300 Victoria St.
Laredo, TX 78040
United States

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