From the front page of today's Ann Arbor News:


     'Whimsical' art
     at mall faces
     wrecking ball

     40-foot tile mural due to be razed unless funds can
     be raised to save it and a place can be found for it

     By Marianne Rzepka, News staff reporter
     ---

     For decades, two children climbed up the side of the
     Arborland Mall, disappearing into the upper reaches of
     the roof that enclosed the structure.

     Now, the 40-foot-tall tile mural that depicts their climb
     can be seen in its entirety since reconstruction work at
     the mall has left much of the original 37-year-old
     shopping center demolished.

     The artwork itself is due to be razed unless money can
     be raised to save it and a place can be found for it.

     Lawrence Kestenbaum, former chairman of Ann
     Arbor's Historical District Commission, noticed the
     mural, even though the top was cut off when the mall
     was enclosed in the 1970s.

     "It was off in the side hallway," he said. "There was this
     mural that was so whimsical, and it didn't seem to be
     connected to anything.

     "The more I looked at it, the more I was entranced by it."

     The mural includes a stylized tree, with two children
     climbing up its branches - one of them at the top. At the
     bottom, a female figure looks up, and in the lower
     branches are a harp and animal figures.

     The mural has a tropical, even African theme,
     Kestenbaum said, and it is vertical, which is seldom seen
     in mall art installations. "It's not typical of the
     early '60s," he said. "That's part of its charm."

     Saving it is possible, Kestenbaum said. "All it
     requires is the desire to do it," he said.

     But time is running out. Most of the mall has been
     demolished to make way for a new configuration of
     stores. Service Merchandise will remain in its current
     building until its new store is built, then that building will
     come down, probably in the first half of next year.

     The mural was offered to the city to preserve at the
     beginning of the project, said Jeff Renkert, spokesman
     for Arborland developers Joseph Freed and Associates.
     "We had no takers," he said.

     Still, it might still be saved. "As long as it doesn't delay
     construction activity," Renkert said.

     Arborland opened in 1961 as an open-air mall and was
     enclosed in 1975. In the 1980s, it because an off-price
     mall. In 1996, owner Balcor Corp. of Bannockburn, Ill.,
     announced plans to rebuild the mall, then sold it to the
     Freed group in October 1997 before starting the project.

     The mural was part of the original mall, which was
     designed by Louis Redstone architects.

     Louis Redstone, now 95, remembered the mural,
     designed by artist Marjorie Krelick, who lives in
     Madison, Wis. Krelick couldn't be reached for
     comment.

     Redstone's philosophy was to include art in every
     building his firm designed. "Every place we could put it,
     we did," he said from his home in Detroit.

     His work includes the international terminal at Detroit
     Metro Airport and the American Bank building, formerly
     Manufacturer's Bank, on Lafayette Street in downtown
     Detroit. On the bank building, an outside metal sculpture
     hides a grille that provides ventilation for an indoor
     parking garage.

    "People come and they know the city by the sculpture,"
     Redstone said. "It becomes part of the city's life."

     Ann Arbor's new Committee for Art in Public Places is
     interested in moving the mural but has been tied up just
     getting basic things - like its bylaws - in place.

     "We haven't taken any action yet," said Tom Bartlett,
     chairman of the committee and owner of the Matrix
     Gallery. "We just don't have the time and resources to
     do it."

     Still, he added, preserving the mural is high on the
     new group's list of priorities.

     "What Louis did throughout his life was to promote art in
     public buildings," said Bartlett. "We want to try to honor
     that effort he made, and I think this is a good way to
     do it."

     But is there a place for it - maybe as part of one of the
     downtown Ann Arbor parking structures?

     "It's hard to say," said Ed Shaffran, a local developer
     and chairman of the Downtown Development Authority,
     which oversees the parking structures.

     There is a lot of work going on now at downtown
     parking structures. The facility at Fourth Avenue and
     Washington will be built in the coming months;
     renovations will begin at the Maynard Street structure
     early next year; and the Forest Avenue parking ramp
     will be demolished and rebuilt in the next year or two.

     Shaffran hasn't seen the mural. Still, he said, the
     proposal wouldn't be dismissed out of hand "if someone
     would pay to move it."