An outdoor art project that features the work of famed architect Maya Lin has racked up major delays, lost track of expenses and yielded structures that have already fallen into disrepair.
The Confluence Project has been since 2002 in the process of building six public art installations along the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon that are intended to promote appreciation of nature.
But Confluences has endured “significant delays” in projects funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the agency’s inspector general said in a recent report.
In one instance, the cut-off deadline for a grant was pushed back two and a half years despite federal regulations that prohibit such extensions, the IG said.
Each of the three NEA grants under review, totaling nearly $150,000, required some sort of extension, the IG found.
Confluences staff did not document their in-kind costs, nor did they screen contractors for federal eligibility, the report said.
Worse, the IG found Confluences had no formal policies in place for managing its federal awards. Most of the financial reports submitted by the project’s managers required revisions to “unallowable costs, incomplete and inaccurate information,” the watchdog said.
The IG recommended that NEA switch the project’s funding to a “cost reimbursement” grant, which requires Confluences to spend its own money up front and then request reimbursements only with supporting documentation.
Once the project’s managers have shown “the ability to adequately manage its awards,” the reimbursement process could be dropped.
The project had run up extra costs on each of the three grants the IG reviewed. For example, for one $25,000 grant, Confluences reported more than $50,000 in outlays.
One grant for $75,000 was still open at the time of the audit, and project staff had yet to submit a final report.
Lin, who shot to fame in 1981 when she won a national contest to design the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., designed each of the six Confluences pieces, two of which have yet to be completed.
The project has cost $31 million since 2002, not including the future cost of the final installation, Confluences director Colin Fogarty said.
Since 2002, the NEA has contributed $362,000, but Confluences does not expect to receive any more funding from the agency, Fogarty said.
The state governments of Washington and Oregon, foundations and private donors fund the rest of the project, Fogarty said.
NEA grants included a $40,000 award to make a prototype of an “online interpretive center.”
At least one of the pricey projects has reportedly fallen into disrepair in the few years since its completion.
Under the headline “Cape Eats Art,” the Chinook Observer described a stone and cedar structure that already appears neglected and weather-worn, thanks to its perch above a Washington beach.
“Long-term maintenance of public art is such a critical issue that gets very little attention,” Fogarty told the Washington Examiner. “We’re working hard to build support for maintenance of our four completed sites.”
The final project is slated for completion in 2016, but a “more realistic estimate is probably 2017,” Fogarty said.
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