Parts of Oak Park will become a virtual outdoor art museum this summer.
Village trustees gave their blessing on Monday for the village to install a temporary sculpture garden around downtown Oak Park in the coming months. The International Sculpture Commission is hosting its annual meeting in Chicago in October, and Oak Park wants to place 12 art pieces along Forest Avenue to coincide with the event.
“We think this is going to bring an awful lot of visibility to the village,” said David Sokol, chairman of the Public Art Advisory Commission, which proposed the idea.
Oak Park has alotted about $25,000 for the effort, which includes $4,000 for someone to oversee it. They plan to pick a dozen or so sculptures to put on display from June 2 to Oct. 13. The bulk of that money, about $18,000, will go toward installing the pieces.
The commission is expected to identify sites and send out a call to artists sometime this month. They will pick sculptures sometime in April.
Sokol said the commission hopes to have the art on display earlier, to be able to take advantage of two high-profile village events this summer — A Day in Our Village and the Wright Plus house walk, both on the first weekend of June. He also suggested that Oak Park could buy one of the art pieces to permanently install at the end of the exhibition.