$100K in state funding earmarked for Porter Square sculpture

For years, conversations about restoring “Gift of the Wind,” the red kinetic sculpture at Porter Square, have been hampered by budget deficits and personnel changes at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. But now, there’s some money behind the matter. State Representative Marjorie Decker announced in early May that she had earmarked $100,000 out of the Massachusetts state budget for critical repairs to the sculpture and is working to convene a meeting between the MBTA and Cambridge city leadership to discuss next steps.

The 41-year-old sculpture is owned by the MBTA and was installed at Porter Square in 1985 when the Red Line Extension Project expanded subway access past Harvard Square. Over time, the sculpture’ s vibrant red coat faded to a grayish pink. Recently, its creator, Susumu Shingu, and Porter Square residents have renewed their requests for a paint job and for its moving parts to be inspected. At a March meeting of the Porter Square Neighborhood Association, which Decker attended, residents discussed the years-long effort to draw attention to the fading sculpture. And in an interview with Cambridge Day, the sculptor Shingu said he would offer his expertise if a restoration was launched.

“Of course we have [the] original drawings and construction materials, so we are ready to help [in] any way,” Shingu said.

Despite the artist’s eagerness and the motivation from nearby Cambridge residents, “there seemed to be a lack of clarity” amongst different stakeholders about how much that project would cost and who would pay for it, said Decker.

“It was a looped conversation,” she said. “Is it the city? The state? The MBTA?”

Although the MBTA has restored the artwork in the past, the transit authority said it no longer had the funds to maintain it. Eventually, Decker asked herself, “What would it look like if I could earmark money instead of taking it out of [the MBTA’s] capital?”

Decker said she originally asked for $350,000, which she says would have created a fund for future maintenance, but ultimately secured $100,000. A final budget for the sculpture’s maintenance has not yet been decided, but $100,000 is unlikely to cover the entire bill. At recent neighborhood association meetings, residents shared estimates ranging from $250,000 to $600,000. Decker said the MBTA’s unofficial quote is on the low end of that spectrum.

The next steps, she said, are to convene a meeting between MBTA and city leadership to agree on the budget of the project, who will lead it, and what collaboration will look like. Decker hopes this meeting will happen by early summer.

A matter of pride

In the 1980s, the MBTA boasted the largest art collection by any transit authority in the nation. Artwork along the Red Line was commissioned by individual committees for each station and was funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. When the artworks were first unveiled, the MBTA’s then-General Manager James F. O’Leary said this of the agency’s attention to aesthetics: “The money that was invested in those stations will return tenfold in terms of the commitment and the pride that people have in those stations.”

That pride, palpable decades ago, has since faded.

“The whole Porter Square station, when it opened, was really beautiful,” said longtime Cambridge resident Chris Jorgenson. “Now, the whole thing needs maintenance, badly. The inside surface, the dome over the tracks. It’s just distressingly dirty and ugly. It’d be great if it looked nice again. I would feel more, ‘Oh yeah, this is my T station!’ instead of ‘Oh, this is my T station…too bad.’”

As a large, kinetic, outdoor sculpture, “Gift of the Wind” has always been one of the MBTA’s most visible artworks. But it’s one of many pieces that have been neglected over the years. Now, there is no department or position at the MBTA solely dedicated to its art.

This presents, Decker said, “a question for every government.”

“When we accept the gift of public art, we also need to maintain … that art,” she said. “there has to be a commitment and a plan from the beginning — who will take care of it and how it’s cared for.”

When public projects debut, Jorgenson noted that maintenance is not often front-of-mind. As a result, repairing public infrastructure can be a thankless task. The work can present an inconvenience to residents and the end result is often invisible.

But, she said, the “Gift of the Wind” has one thing going for it.

“Compared to a pipe in the ground, it’s visible.”

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