Leslie Markle, the Public Art Associate of the Arts Council, emails an update on the Majic Wand. As I mentioned in the previous entry, discussion regarding restoring the Wand has recently begun, but there are still a number of unknowns. Among the unknowns: what state the Wand is, and what repairs need to be made; how much it would cost to reactivate the Wand; what the maintenance costs for a functioning Wand would be; and, interestingly, who actually owns the Majic Wand.

Markle, who is new to the Arts Council, has just begun looking into these matters. He suspects that the Wand went dark because “the funding for it was used up.” As he notes, “Permanent electronic art tends to be costly and more problematic to maintain relative to other media. This is why agencies like the MTA in Los Angeles, and others, have moved away from this type of work for permanent projects.”

But costly and more problematic or not, Markle says that he and Craig Beck, head of the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency (which funds the Public Arts program through the city’s Percent for Arts Program), are “very interested in lighting up Pine Avenue again”. And its not just the Majic Wand being considered for recommissioning. There’s also some early talk about reviving of one of the Wand’s contemporaries, Eric Orr’s Lumiere, an art installation that used xenon lamps to light up the sky over Landmark Square.

Tags: Arts Council of Long Beach, Craig Beck, Eric Orr, Landmark Square, Leslie Markle, Lumiere, Majic Wand, public art, Public Arts Program, Redevelopment Agency, Rockne Krebs