Fort Morgan as 14 bronze sculptures ready and waiting for installation in Fort Morgan parks and facilities in coming months, according to Fort Morgan Museum Curator Brian Mack.
“We’re to the exciting part of the process, I think, actual installation,” he said. “So we’re kind of deciding what kind of pedestals to put them on, what kind of plaques, what kind of information will be contained in that.”
The sculptures are the result of the Fort Morgan City Council’s plan to have more public art displayed around the city.
“The intent was to install these sculptures throughout the community in an effort to increase the culture of arts in Fort Morgan,” Fort Morgan Library & Museum Director Chandra McCoy said.
The council had budgeted $100,000 for that purpose in 2016, but time ran out on that budget sooner than city officials could decide how to spend it.
The council then entrusted that $100,000 to the Fort Morgan Heritage Foundation with an agreement that the foundation find appropriate ways to use the city’s money for either procuring or commissioning public art projects.
A committee of foundation members met many times over about six months in 2017 before deciding to go with recommending purchasing bronze sculptures from the Randolph Rose Collection, with plaques to be placed beside them detailing the connection the artwork’s subject was showing to Fort Morgan and Morgan County.
Those sculptures arrived at the city in late 2017 and early 2018, and city staff has been working to get everything ready for installing them in various city parks and facilities, according to Mack and Fort Morgan Library/Museum Director Chandra McCoy.
One of the first sculptures that will be installed will be one celebrating diversity. It portrays “four children of different races holding hands,” McCoy explained. That sculpture will be placed on the concrete pad in the southwest corner of City Park that previously held the Dinky train engine.
Two other sculptures that are going to be installed in City Park involve benches and books, both references to the library and learning. One will go by the giant chess board and the other will go by the window that looks into the Museum Gift Shop near the west entrance to the library/museum.
“They’re actually the simplest because the concrete pads were already there,” Mack said Friday of why these three would go in first. “It’s just a matter of securing them. I hope they get started on that soon. Everybody’s getting busy.”
Other sculptures portray a skateboarder, a tennis player, a child fishing, children playing baseball, a golfer, a boy swimming, boy and his dog and a dog by itself and more. The two sculptures featuring dogs likely will be located, one each, in the city’s two dog parks in Gateway Park and Fulton Heights Park. The ones of baseball players could go at Legion Field or other ball fields. Several sculptures could be placed in Riverside Park, perhaps the tennis player one in Optimist Park, and the one of the skateboarder is likely to be installed in Brenda Joy Park near the new skate park, according to Mack.
Final placement of the sculptures will depend upon what types of foundations or bases will be needed and what locations wind up best suited for the particular sculptures, he said.
Fort Morgan Parks Department employees are working with museum and city carpentry staff to make the arrangements for the installations of the sculptures, Mack said.
The foundation spent $72,707 on the 14 sculptures, which included $4,757 in shipping costs.
Mack said he thought the sculptures were “a good use of the city’s money by the Heritage Foundation,” and he credited the foundation for finding the Randolph Rose Collection.
The sculptures that arrived were what was promised to the city, he said, with the bronze sculptures being OK for placing outdoors.
“They’re manufactured to withstand weather,” Mack said. “You see lots of bronze inside, but I think they’re great outside.”
The remaining city funds the Heritage Foundation still holds are being used for the materials for installation of the sculptures and related plaques, as well as for a tile mosaic Brush artist Joe Marler is creating. A picture of the plan for that mosaic is on display by the circulation desk in the library.
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