As the City of Austin prepares to demolish and rebuild its convention center, it has deaccessioned four public art pieces within the building and intends not to pay for the removal of the works. If they are not removed, the pieces will be destroyed upon the building’s demolition.
The Austin Convention Center website’s Visual Art Collection page has not been updated to explain the future of the works in the building. In part, it states, “In keeping with the City of Austin’s Art in Public Places Program (AIPP), several iconic pieces were commissioned as part of the capital improvement budget for the original construction of the Austin Convention Center and subsequent additions. In addition to the public art collection, the Austin Convention Center Department began acquiring additional works by some of the region’s most accomplished artists, which can be found in various spots throughout the facility.”
Rolando Briseño, “Macro/Micro Culture,” 2002
The website lists 21 works of art as part of the collection, including a mural in the 2nd St. parking garage. Among the pieces listed on the website are prints, photographs, paintings, sculptures, and murals. One item on the agenda of the January 30, 2025, City Council meeting was to approve the deaccession of eight AIPP works, including four located at the convention center. These four works are Margo Sawyer’s Index for Contemplation (2002), a site-specific sculptural installation; Rolando Briseño’s Macro/Micro Culture (2002), an installation of giclee prints, which are permanently affixed to the walls; John Yancey’s Riffs & Rhythms (1996), a mosaic mural built into the structure of the wall; and Damion Priour’s Waller Creek Shelves (1996), a sculptural installation.
A detail of Damion Priour’s “The Waller Creek Shelves,” 1996, limestone, glass, and found objects
During the City Council meeting, various community members spoke up in support of the artists. Many questioned the need to demolish the convention center, which they categorized as “perfectly functional,” simply to rebuild a larger facility. Others questioned why the $1.6 billion budget for the structure did not include funding to support the removal of the artists’ works.
Former Council Member Ora Houston remarked, “Dr. Yancey is a one of a kind artist whose work elevates and celebrates African American heritage and pride. That’s why, years ago, the city commissioned Riffs & Rhythms… Please ensure that his mural is safely removed and properly stored and protected so it can be prominently displayed in the new convention center. We are on the verge of Black History Month — allowing the destruction of a Black artist’s mural would be, in my opinion and the opinion of many others in our community, very disrespectful and embarrassing.”
John Yancey, “Riffs & Rhythm,” 1996, broken ceramic tile mosaic
Mr. Yancey, a renowned artist and Professor Emeritus of Studio Art at the University of Texas at Austin, said at the meeting, “Shortly after moving to Austin, I was commissioned to create and install the work titled Riffs & Rhythms at the then-newly-built convention center. With color and vibrant presence, this work celebrates the multicultural phenomenon of the various genres of Texas music. For 30 years, it has greeted millions of the attendees to South by Southwest and countless conferences and conventions… I’m here to ask the City Council to do three things: pause, assess, and preserve. I urgently request that you pause the accession because the current policy is obsolete and not applicable to current realities, it states, in the case of deaccession, the artist can reclaim the work at his or her expense…”
The insistence of the City that the artists reclaim their work at their own expense contradicts some of the artists’ contracts for their convention center commissions. The contract Mr. Yancey signed in 1995 states, “…If the City shall at any time decide to dispose of the Work by means other than sale or trade, it shall by notice to the Artist offer the Artist a reasonable opportunity to recover the Work at no cost to the Artist except for an obligation of the Artist to indemnify and reimburse the City for the amount by which the cost to the City of such recovery exceed the costs to the City of the proposed destruction.”
By contrast, Ms. Sawyer’s 2001 contract states that if the artwork can be removed from a building or structure without damaging either the work or the building, the artist can remove it “at her sole expense.”
Regarding the artists taking on the removal expenses, Mr. Yancey continued, “This policy is unrealistic and unreasonable. In most cases, artists cannot possibly afford to hire the conservators, expert crews, and [pay for the] heavy equipment at their own expense to reclaim their work as stated in the outdated policy. Moreover, it is very possible, the current deaccession policy and the proposed act of deaccession before you today, may be in violation of the federal Visual Artist [Rights] Act of 1990, or the VARA act of 1990.”
While VARA protects artists from the “destruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modification” of their work, which would “harm his or her reputation or honor,” it does waive these rights when “a work cannot be removed from a building without” such alteration.
During the meeting, Council Member Anthony Seger, Interim Director of the Economic Development Department, stated the City had three companies come out to assess each of the works in the convention center, and in regards to Mr. Yancey’s mural each said they couldn’t move it due to its size. Council Member Seger recounted the companies added that the work “[wouldn’t] be the same even if you were to try to salvage it.”
Glasstire reached out to Jaime Castillo, the AIPP Manager, and Sue Lambe, the former AIPP Director and current public art consultant for the Austin Convention Center, for comment about the companies the City contacted to assess the potential removal of the works, and the money allocated for new art in the convention center budget.
A spokesperson for the City responded and declined to share information about the specific vendors who assessed the work. However, they noted that in November 2024 AIPP requested evaluations of the four artworks slated for deaccession, and two of the three vendors provided cost estimates for the works, excluding the mural by Mr. Yancey. The spokesperson said, “The vendors indicated that [Mr. Yancey’s] artwork was permanently affixed to a site wall with mortar, making removal infeasible without significant damage and reassembly impossible.”
Regarding the budget allocated for new art in the to-be-built convention center, the spokesperson shared, “The project includes a $17.7 million public art investment, the largest in Austin’s history… While the budget prioritizes new artwork integration, [the Austin Convention Center Department] contributed funds to support the deaccession process, including documentation and assessments of removal feasibility. However, site-specific constraints and cost estimates ultimately determined that removal was not feasible for certain pieces.” The City’s statement did not specifically respond to Glasstire’s question of why some of the budget for the new convention center could not go toward the deinstallation of the artworks in the current building.
Donna Carter, an architect who was on the team that drafted the original AIPP ordinance in 1985, spoke at the City Council meeting. She commented, “Despite a decade of redevelopment discussions and over a billion dollar budget, the fate of these public works was addressed less than a year before scheduled demolition, the city identified four pieces they deemed, not a conservator, they deemed were not salvageable. They provided no assessment, cost, estimates, or conservator’s view on how they could salvage [or] essential steps in any preservation effort. This lack of planning contradicts the very spirit of a permanent connection, and this is a failure of leadership.”
Martha Peters, the former Director of Public Art at Arts Fort Worth who served as an administrator for Austin’s AIPP program from 1991-2003 (during the time these works were commissioned), spoke with Glasstire about national best practices around deaccessioning public art. She pointed to the Fort Worth Public Art Master Plan Update (2017), which states, “Deaccessioning should be cautiously applied only after an impartial evaluation of the artwork to avoid the influence of fluctuations of taste and the premature removal of an artwork from the collection. Prior to the deaccession of any work, the Art Commission must weigh carefully the interests of the public… and the interests of the scholarly and cultural communities.”
Ms. Peters went on to say, “For me, the issue is not about what’s ‘legal,’ but what is truly in the best interests of the City of Austin’s public art collection (all of the works being deaccessioned are of outstanding quality and have withstood the test of time) and these local artists, who were carefully selected to create site-specific works that reflects Austin’s diverse arts community to convention center visitors. I feel that the city is missing an opportunity to incorporate these works (or modified versions of the larger installations) into the design of the new convention center, or, at the very least, relocate the works to other city buildings so they can remain on public view.”
Ultimately, during the City Council meeting, City Council members voted to approve the deaccessioning of the artworks, with only Mayor Pro Tem Vanessa Fuentes voting against the agenda item. Additionally, Council Member Zohaib “Zo” Qadri noted the concerns brought by community members, but indicated that if the agenda item was not passed, the artists would not have an opportunity to reclaim their work.
He explained he would be voting yes for that reason, but went on to say, “I’m committed to working with my colleagues and City staff to explore solutions to address the challenges that have resurfaced… I look forward to collaborating on meaningful steps to support and sustain our creative community and in the upcoming weeks [and] months, we’re going to put pen to paper and get something done.”
Last week, a month out from the council meeting, Glasstire reached out to Mr. Qadri to follow up on what solutions may be in the works. At the time of publication Mr. Qadri had not responded to our inquiry.
Margo Sawyer, “Index for Contemplation,” 2002, powder-coated steel & aluminum and yellow zinc-plated steel
Regarding the removal of her work, Ms. Sawyer, who is the niece of Harlem-Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas, told Glasstire, “I was never invited to have a discussion with AIPP, or the committee who had the discussions on what art to keep and what not to deaccession… The Convention Center only reached out when it was too late. No consideration for the importance of the art. No consideration for discussion and input until it was too late.”
Ms. Sawyer pointed to shifts in the AIPP leadership over the last two years as a potential cause for the lack of communication around the decisions about the artworks. Ms. Lambe stepped down as Director of AIPP in January 2022. Following her departure, Constance White served as Manager of AIPP from July 2022 until July 2024, when Mr. Castillo stepped into the role.
Ms. Sawyer told Glasstire that she first learned in the summer of 2023 from a news article about the plans to demolish and rebuild the center. At the time she reached out to AIPP and her contact did not know about the plans for her art. On July 28, 2024, she received an email informing her that her work would be deaccessioned and that she could remove it at her own expense.
Ms. Sawyer noted that she will work with a team to remove her work at a personal cost of $16,000. While the amount may seem small in comparison to the City’s budget for new art in the Convention Center, Ms. Sawyer explained that in order to make the removal possible, she is pulling money from her retirement funds to remove and store the work.
