You know when you drive, bike, or walk over the crest of the New York Avenue bridge in Northeast and the city sort of opens up before you? It’s a thrilling moment for the newcomer, or the homecomer, when you realize, “I’m in Washington.”
In 2012, that moment will get a bit more dramatic, when the bridge is crowned with an abstract metal bower illuminated at night by spotlights. It’s part of an ongiong project by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities to set off key entrypoints to the city with public art, like the flashing beacon recently installed on the 14th Street bridge.
The artist, Kent Bloomer, has done dozens of monumental art projects around the country, including one at our own Reagan Airport. Some in the audience at his presentation before ANC 5C last week, while impressed, wondered whether the art might provide dangerously distracting for drivers—but Bloomer says a much bigger project, the Archway Monument on 1-80 in Nebraska, has only resulted in one accident so far. The whole project is expected to cost about $500,000 from start to finish.
