Decentering the Public Gaze
Andrea Dietz (AD) interviews Miranda Kyle (MK)
AD: You are the Program Manager of Arts and Culture for Atlanta BeltLine, “one of the largest, most wide-ranging urban redevelopment programs in the United States”—and a project that integrates the arts into its every aspect. The BeltLine is, in fact, a role model for municipalities around the country. What about BeltLine do you want to see other municipalities doing (or not doing)?
MK: Oh, that's great. And, the reason that that's a great question is because of the not doing part. So, I'm gonna speak from the arts point of view, because [BeltLine is] not an arts program. I manage an arts program that's housed inside an infrastructure project—which is very different than how most municipalities manage their public art. Most municipalities are, like, ‘here's the people who do our public art; they will public art about the land.’ I, on the other hand, have a very specific jurisdiction [that], because my jurisdiction touches everybody else in the city of Atlanta, I work very closely with all these other entities in the city. This is different… and exciting.
One of the things that I really love [that I get] to do in my curation of [this 22-mile] corridor is decenter the gaze of authority. I get to ask, ‘who has the right to curate, [to intervene in], public space?’ That… is very tough for municipalities to stomach. I am in a unique position where I really can push the idea of a decentered gaze, or a decentered praxis. The BeltLine goes through 45 distinct neighborhoods. They all have unique cultural identities. Part of my role is not to monopolize what I think should be in our public commons.
Public space, in general, has such a long and awful history of displacement, and genocide, and eradication, and erasure. And, there can be no decolonization of public space without its full return to the original stewards of the land. This is another hard thing for many people to stomach. My role is to approach what my colleague, Anthony Romero, calls an indigenization of public space. This is an approach that's holistic and that includes both the cultural praxis of indigenous communities, as well as the protocols of the other marginalized peoples who are in these spaces. For Atlanta, that means working hard to elevate the black and immigrant voices in this corridor. Atlanta’s neighborhoods have been violently affected by compounding acts of policy and protocol for decades. The BeltLine is a real uniter. But, that is a BIG mandate to fill amidst rampant development that also threatens to green wash and gentrify these spaces.
So, that is the outlook that I would love to see other municipalities adopt. I know it's tough. Time is so different in communities that require the most support compared with the time of bureaucracy. We have a fiscal year to stay on top of, a grant cycle to stay on top of. That's not how you build the relationships and the community to elevate underrepresented voices. That takes a different kind of time. There needs to be an investment in rethinking time. We need to realize that we can't adhere to a fiscal year calendar. I would like to see other municipalities do time better.
I’d also like to see all of us developing the legislation and programs to keep people in place… and, not just people within a fixed target range of the AMI [Area Median Income]. For example, before the BeltLine construction on the Eastside Trail, there were warehouses that were full of artists and galleries and community spaces. It was a bustling hub. Not anymore. That’s all gone. It all got developed away. Now, we're having a problem funding artists who live in the city of Atlanta, because nobody can afford to live here anymore. We have money that has to go to City-of-Atlanta-only artists that we’re struggling to expend, because so few City-of-Atlanta-only artists exist anymore. It is absolutely necessary, if we are to keep the cultural character of our cities intact, we have to make accommodations to keep creative ecologies intact. And, I’m not just talking about painters, graphic designers, and photographers—who can live in an apartment and call it live-work space. It's also for sculptors, and dancers, and musicians, and the weird DIY gallerists. We need all of these activities and spaces in the ecology. Instead, people who have been coming here recently are asking, “where's all the cool shit?” And, we’re having to respond, “oh, that moved outside the perimeter.” The whole reason people come to this city is gone. This is a very real thing, right now. So, my hope would be that other municipalities are able to figure out a way to keep their creative class in place.
AD: Retrospectively, do you see ways that BeltLine could have kept the creative class in place? Or, maybe there are ways to bring it back?
MK: We are building out in phases. So, since I've been in my current role, I've been banging that drum as hard as I can. And, we may see some progress. But, I also think we're a runaway train, at this point. It really has to be built in from the very beginning.
I do think that 11th Street Bridge Park did a great job with that. Shout out to Irfana Jetha Noorani for reading through our equity project. She read that and thought, ‘oh, maybe we'll do things a little bit differently.’ And, that project has done an amazing job keeping residents and cultural makers in place—in spite of development coming in all over the place.
AD: Perfect segue; this next question builds on exactly this… Your role gives you unique insight into the challenges and potentials of positioning the arts as an agent in and for community. What is a struggle with which you contend and what is an ideal to which you aspire regarding relationships between the arts and community?
MK: Public art is tricky… because you often find yourself editing down to the lowest common denominator. It's tough to have the really needed and hard conversations in shared public space, because there can be no liminality in approach. Here, we’re aspiring to space for everyone, where everyone can feel welcome. That means the MAGA mom and the queer activist; both have to feel safe in this space. That's a hard thing for me to deal with every day. I mean, I definitely have to hold back on the things that I would really want. So, there has to be a balance in how we approach the curation of public space.
My default is to center on the shared human experience, things that bring out the best in everyone. I lean into wonder. Everybody needs a little bit of hope and wonder in their life, a little bit of magic. And, we have lost some of that in our current over-politicized and polarized world. So, even through having to reduce work down to its most palatable version, I try to find what can be the most impactful and meaningful, to get people to have those harder conversations because they find themselves having a moment at the same piece of public art. This is the goal. Everyone can experience beauty and wonder and can have a revelatory experience in a public space. And, then, maybe, by proximity, they are able to discuss their differences in a space that is holding versus polarizing them.
This is the answer to both questions. This is the struggle and the aspiration.
AD: The number of communities that are touched by BeltLine is overwhelming. That you have such a diverse group of perspectives to accommodate, to represent, is challenging, to say the least.
MK: It's hard. Yes, Atlanta is known as a locus of Black culture. And, yes, as the queer capital of the south. But… racism, discrimination, has not run its course, here. These coexistences have to be handled in ways that feel reconciliatory, without feeling accusatory. This is hard.
We were approached, a couple of years ago, by a group that was part of the Start Talking. Stop HIV. campaign to do a mural to celebrate queer lives. They had done a lot of incredible work in the community, had worked with the community to site the mural on the BeltLine. It was such a fight to get this approved. There were concerns that it would appear that we were endorsing a certain lifestyle. There were concerns that, because the mural was sited in a historically Black neighborhood, the neighborhood wouldn’t want it. I had to argue that the whole effort was being led by Black queer folks, in their neighborhood, talking about their needs. In Atlanta, Black men and trans women are at the highest risk in the country for contracting HIV. This community needed that visibility, that support. Getting the We Are All Thriving with HIV project approved was such a long slog. Now, though, it is the only mural on the BeltLine that has never been vandalized. It is a sacred space for the whole community.
AD: New subject. Your department was the first of its kind to be awarded both NEA and NEH grants. A goal of Support Structures is to articulate the needs for and the value of federal (or collective) support for the arts and built environment. I’m hoping that you will describe your experiences with and share your perspectives on navigating granting and funding for Art on the Atlanta BeltLine?
MK: NEA and NEH grants are really, really, super important. And, they are difficult to manage, because of their reporting style. Not because doing them is hard. If we look at big federal grants through an equity lens, they're very hard for people who don’t write grants all the time to manage. They're hard for individual artists and small organizations to manage. There is a funding equity gap between the bigger, massive organizations who have dedicated project managers to manage these federal grants versus the small organizations who have less than half-a-dozen people working for them, who are just trying to do the day-to-day work. Federal grants management can feel really overwhelming and exclusionary. I served on the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network, an advisory group to NEA policy. This was one of the things we talked about all the time. We were repeatedly asking, “this is hard; how would we make this easy?”
I'm very lucky and I'm very spoiled. I have a phenomenal grant writer here at Beltline, Lena Carstens. She is just a wizard; she manages all things grants for me. All I have to do is send her a paragraph every once in a while, and she does the bulk of the labor translating the ideas for the big federal grants. I write her love notes, once a year, at least.
State and county and city grants are different. Even so, the struggle is always going to be timing. I wish that grants were executable over several years, or were timeline blind. But, this gets me back to my rant about time. Anyway… the language used in these grants and in their processing and reporting is very difficult for lay people to wrap their heads around. Unless you have a degree in arts administration, it’s daunting. And, what ends up happening is a massive loss of really incredible creative ideas, just because the grants aren’t accessible. I wish there were more organizations that did pro bono grant writing for artists… but, they are few and far between and they are busy.
AD: Do you see any in-a-perfect-world scenarios to address these barriers?
MK: Oh, yes. This is my controversial opinion. I think more people who give out money should move away from also creating programming. The creative programming is already happening. Just give the money to the people who already are doing the programming. I promise they exist in your city. I promise. I promise. That’s my soapbox. When funders are like, “We're gonna invent…” I'm like, “No, you're not. It already exists. Give somebody else the money to do it. I know you're excited, but just write checks, honey.”
AD: Haha. Yes!
Next question. You have made both real effort and real progress intervening on systems in the arts and community development that preference privilege and Eurocentric ideologies; you have developed considered practices that forward access, equity, and representation for people of color and those conventionally excluded from recognition and support. Will you talk both to where you see progress and what you are up against as you push for change?
MK: Well… I get called a ‘racist bootlicker,’ at least once a week. So, I think, whatever work you're doing, you have to be completely thick-skinned and able to take criticism in public. This is the only way I've been able to grow. My entire career, I have been surrounded by incredible Black women, who have called me out, who have kept me accountable, who have educated me, who have called me in, who have pointed out when I fucked-up. Without them, my curatorial practice wouldn't be what it is. I have had indigenous matriarchs do the same thing. I have had the wisdom of elders and community around me my entire life, keeping me accountable, educating me. It is vitally important for all curators not to get too big in their britches, thinking that they know everything… Be constantly ready to be humbled, to be wrong, and to get out of the way. These are the core tenants for how I move through this work; they also have been helpful in making me successful.
I'm white-coded. If the information that I’m trying to get out into the universe were coming from a black woman, or a phenotypical indigenous woman, or a queer man, it wouldn't be received in the same way. I do have tattoos, and green hair, and look a little weird, but I'm still existing in this world as a white-coded, cis-presenting woman. I think that acknowledging that privilege and using it as a doorstop to allow somebody else to have the microphone is really important.
And, we’re back to the decentering of the curatorial view of the BeltLine. The whole reason I instituted its residency program was to combat the fact that public art professionals, people like me, are mostly middle-aged white women. Less than 4% are people of color; less than 2% are Black women. That's an accessibility and an education thing. They’ll get hired to do one-off projects, and organizations are like, “Cool. Look. We checked the box. We hired a Black woman to curate this project.” But, that's not making systemic change; that's not creating a system or pathways to careers. The residency program that we founded in 2019 was done so specifically to address that. It is a yearlong intensive on how to be a public art professional, either as an artist, or as a curator, or as a scholar who is writing and thinking about public art. This is my baby. And, it is wildly successful. I am over the moon to see the career trajectories of the creatives that have come through the program. I feel like a happy mama. It is truly wonderful. My goal at the end of all of this is to curate myself out of a job. I just want to retreat to my library and die happy under my books. Seriously, I want to create an ecosystem to replace me, and other people like me. It can’t always be over-educated, white ladies curating entire cityscapes.
AD: Potentially last question. What issues in (public) art, community development, organizational management, or the built environment are most pressing for you? What concerns or questions would you want Support Structures to raise? Or, please feel free to bring up anything that you want to discuss that we have not covered.
MK: Oh, this is a good one, too. So, greenwashing is a development tactic that I think is particularly insidious. That a developer will go in, buy a blighted neighborhood, let certain houses fall apart, bulldoze them, and… “Oh my gosh, look, we've got this cute little meadow. Well, now we're going to call it a green space. Well, now it's a parklet.” No, now everyone’s taxes have gone up and people are being displaced. It is a long game method, but we see it all the time. For me, having an indigenous mom, knowing the history of displacement in this country, knowing the history of the National Park Service, I am particularly sensitive to parks being leveraged to remove people. Don’t get me wrong, I think parks are incredibly vital to city life. But, for me, there is always an internal struggle between how do we enhance neighborhoods, provide needed and even wanted amenities, and how do we prevent these amenities from being turned into the tools of displacement?
I don’t really have a fix for this, but there is something beautiful and organic when communities institute space for themselves versus when the city imposes it. There is a phenomenal author, Setha Lowe, who I tell everyone to read. Her book is called On the Plaza. In it, she talks about her 20 years of observations of a public square in Mexico that was cultivated by community, that operated as a super vibrant ecosystem, until… the city took notice and started putting stuff in there. They completely disrupted how people moved through the space, the economy of the space, who was there, how safe it was. Did they ask anyone what people wanted? And, like most cities, they would answer, “yes, we did a whole community engagement process.” But, was the ‘community’ the same 10 people who always show up to these community engagement meetings? Because, that happens. Or, did you go and knock on doors, talk to neighbors, sit in the square for a while, before you did anything? That’s the difference between space being cultivated by community versus it being developed for community. In development, it’s revitalization versus gentrification. But, it all boils down to place-keeping versus placemaking. That’s the biggest dilemma that I run into in my work.
AD: Thank you for sharing, Miranda. This has been fantastic.
Miranda Kyle is the Arts and Culture Program Manager for Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. (ABI) and curates the annual Art on the Atlanta BeltLine Public Art Exhibition. After an academic fellowship with ABI, and assisting with installations in the subsequent years, Kyle was appointed to her current position in 2017. Since then, she has restructured ABI’s Public Art Program, managed an NEA Our Town grant to create and implement an Arts and Culture Strategic Implementation Plan, and overseen the commissioning of hundreds of art activations along the corridor. In her role as the Program Manager for Arts and Culture, she supports the department of Design and Construction to incorporate art into park and trail design, engage developers to consider public art in their construction, and advise on secondary design elements like benches and future transit stops. Additionally, Kyle works on interdepartmental collaborations with Community Engagement and Planning by managing relationships with outside arts organizations and institutions such as the National Black Arts Festival, the Woodruff Center for the Arts, Living Walls, Southern Fried Queer Pride, and Artlanta Gallery. She ensures the local creative community is integrated into the public art program with activations like Family Paint Day, and the Special Projects platform that asks the communities on the BeltLine to put forth their ideas for exhibitions.