Melt It Down and Try Again

A truly great artwork delivers a powerful message, and the message of Thousand Oaks’ much-maligned copper curtain is this: If there is anything on Earth that should not be done by committee, it is art.

Half-steps and bureaucratic timidity turned what might have been a pretty good idea into a mystifying mess. More half-steps are not the way to fix it. It’s time to melt it down and try again.

Earlier this month, for the first time anyone can remember, a representative of the architect/artist who designed the thing braved a public hearing to explain what he originally had in mind. It could have been quite striking--all those 3-inch by 3-foot copper panels fluttering in the breeze on their supporting cables, reflecting the setting sun off patterns of multicolored patinas all the way down to the building’s backstage “bustle.”

But having spent $64 million of the public’s money to build the complex (including a City Council chamber that would make King Tut blush), would you want to commit to expensive re-coating of those patinas every few years, forever?

And though acoustical studies swore that it would take the mightiest of Santa Anas to strum the curtain’s cables hard enough to send vibrations resonating through the auditorium, would you want to go down in history as the politician who signed off on the world’s biggest bass fiddle?

We will never know how spectacular Antoine Predock’s original design might have looked. There was a scale model, but it has ominously vanished into swirling mists of City Hall. Perhaps it’s just as well.

The public hearing on the subject was an inspiring example of democracy in action. The people of Thousand Oaks clearly care about their community, and they brought dozens of ideas about what might grace the side of their Civic Arts Plaza--from wacky to workable, and everything in between.

That is why we like the Arts Commission’s suggestion to hold a contest and let the public decide. No, it’s not the way to create great art. But it’s a fine and appropriate way to add the finishing flourish to a building complex envisioned as a center for this uncommonly involved community.

And slightly used copper is going for 55 cents a pound.