{"id":186730,"date":"2026-02-20T23:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T23:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/186730\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T23:13:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T23:13:07","slug":"west-sacramento-to-gauge-interest-in-new-public-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/186730\/","title":{"rendered":"West Sacramento to gauge interest in new public art"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Abridged version:<\/p>\n

West Sacramento has launched its new Public Art Strategic Plan.<\/p>\n

Officials hope to gauge resident interest in new art and identify potential funding sources for projects.<\/p>\n

The effort will kick off with a survey and a public listening session on Monday at City Hall.<\/p>\n

Decades of development in West Sacramento have added dozens of blank walls, empty open spaces, sidewalks, bike paths and obsolete infrastructure to the city\u2019s hubs.<\/p>\n

As they are, these places don\u2019t often grab a second glance. But now, city officials hope a little bit of imagination, along with some money, can transform them into unique destinations worthy of a stop.<\/p>\n

To do so, West Sacramento is launching its new Public Art Strategic Plan with the goal of expanding its stock of murals, sculptures, interpretive spaces and the like in publicly accessible places. The plan will begin by gathering input through an online survey<\/a> and public input sessions, the first of which is on Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Public art in West Sacramento<\/p>\n

Although this is a new initiative, it\u2019s not the first time West Sacramento has identified public art as a priority.<\/p>\n

When the riverfront was being developed in the late 90s and early 2000s, a handful of public art projects were created, including the painting and beautification of the river walk water and communication towers. Over the last couple of decades, places like the Bridge District, also on the river, put a variety of sculptures and murals in public places as part of development plans.<\/p>\n

\"sculpture\"Jun Kaneko\u2019s 1994 sculpture \u201cDango\u201d on the River Walk in West Sacramento. (Shelley Ho)<\/p>\n

To add structure to the city\u2019s efforts, officials established an Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Commission in 2003 with the charge of guiding West Sacramento\u2019s cultural enrichment.<\/p>\n

The commission worked to build an inventory of the city\u2019s already existing public art<\/a> and drafted a \u201cPublic Art Strategy\u201d<\/a> with higher level goals for designing, developing, funding and carrying out projects.<\/p>\n

But Doug Drozd, deputy city manager for West Sacramento, said the original strategy, which was developed in 2007, didn\u2019t establish a framework for funding projects without outside assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the most part, that public art strategy, that\u2019s now almost 20 years old, didn\u2019t really lay out a sustainable, long-term funding source or guidelines around where our priorities were for public art,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The plan dedicated 1% of the municipal projects\u2019 budget to a public art fund, but Drozd said that amount has not been adequate to fund projects proactively. As a result, the city has had to rely on outside sources for money, including private donations and grants.<\/p>\n

\"sculpture\"Michael Bishop\u2019s 2001 sculpture \u201cWaiting for Titus\u201d on display in The Bridge District in West Sacramento. (Shelley Ho)<\/p>\n

A new strategy<\/p>\n

This new effort is an attempt to identify more reliable sources of funding, gauge the public\u2019s interest in spending money on art and come up with a way to prioritize what kinds to install.<\/p>\n

So far, no decisions have been made about what funding strategies to pursue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really just want to evaluate the options that are out there and see what might work for us,\u201d Drozd said.<\/p>\n

The effort is still in its very early stages, and Drozd said feedback from the public will inform the city\u2019s strategy on public art in the future.<\/p>\n

The first input session will be Monday at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall (1110 W. Capitol Avenue). <\/p>\n

Daniel Hennessy\u00a0joins Abridged from the California Local News Fellowship. He\u2019s a\u00a0reporter covering Yolo County.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"sculpture\"Federico Diaz\u2019s 2017 sculpture \u201cSubtile\u201d is located on the River Walk in West Sacramento. (Shelley Ho)<\/p>\n

\"sculpture\"Federico Diaz\u2019s 2017 sculpture \u201cSubtile\u201d is located on the River Walk in West Sacramento. (Shelley Ho)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Abridged version: West Sacramento has launched its new Public Art Strategic Plan. Officials hope to gauge resident…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122,65250,10540],"class_list":{"0":"post-186730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-sacramento","9":"tag-sacramento-headlines","10":"tag-sacramento-news","11":"tag-secondary-highlight","12":"tag-top-story"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}