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Public Art:
Hybrids of Art and Architecture
Adorn the Washington Area
by Asya Snejnevski
Sculptures by Jackie Braitman at the Chuck Brown Memorial Park. Photo © Diego Moya
Washington, DC, and Arlington, Virginia, have experi- Langdon Park, on the corner of 20th and Franklin streets,
enced a surge in public art recently. Have you noticed NE. The park is the work of Marshall Moya Design.
any new art installations pop up along your daily com- Chuck Brown, the “Godfather of Go-Go,” was a key
mute? Or maybe new structures in your local park or contributor to the DC music scene and a local hero.
along the highway? Within the past 15 years, both cities Go-Go music is a regional subgenre of funk that originated
have not only approved and begun to implement public in the early 1960s in Washington, DC, with a strong focus
art master plans, which seek to improve neighborhoods, on call and response between the musicians and the
strengthen communities, and create more sustainable audience. Working on a tight schedule, the park was
cities, but have surpassed that original initiative to invite unveiled with great fanfare on August 22, 2014, on what
more public art to their streets. Through public works in would have been Brown’s 78th birthday.
parks, along busy highways, and on city blocks, the
Washington metropolitan area is blossoming into an even The Chuck Brown Memorial Park features a wall of
more attractive and welcoming place to call home. images of Brown taken from photographs contributed by
his children alongside posters advertising concerts held
A Shrine to a in the city. “We wanted to have actual images,” says
Local Music Legend head architect Michael Marshall, AIA, NOMA, design
director and principal at Marshall Moya Design, “pictures
One of the most recent additions to the DC cityscape is of him when he was younger and with his band. [We]
the Chuck Brown Memorial Park, part of the larger wanted to be really clear about who he was and that he
was a person of color.” Because Marshall grew up just a
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