Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

Airport art: definitely worth a look

Art, ,

Next time you’re at the airport, take a moment to look around. Not just at all the shops, restaurants and harried holiday travelers, but at all the really great art.

(Photo: From Inside Track exhibit; courtesy San Francisco International Airport)

In addition to some truly wonderful – and valuable – collections of permanent and site-specific art, many U.S. airports offer ambitious rotating schedules of art, history and cultural exhibitions as intriguing as anything you’ll find in town.

And this time of year, who has time to go into town anyway?

For a preview of some fun stuff currently on view in the nation’s airports take a look at my “At the Airport” column posted today in USAToday.com: Airport round-up: Best exhibits at a terminal near you. There’s a great slide show accompanying the column, but here are few extra images we didn’t have room for.

From the Stitchalicious exhibit of “sweets” made from felt, brillo pads and other non-edibles by Mindy Sue Meyers at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

(Photo courtesy Phoenix Airport Museum).

This Beech Nut Circus Wagon, is one of the “jaw-dropping and wondrous” objects from 25 regional museums on display at New York’s Albany International Airport.

(Photo courtesy – New York State Museum)

Slot machines at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport???

Gambling

Last week I wrote in Portfolio.com about the unusual ways some airports have found to earn income – such as growing and selling hay planted on airport acreage to signing contracts to allow outside companies to drill for oil and gas underneath airport ground.

That article also noted that, for some time now, Reno-Tahoe International Airport and McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas have been raking in the bucks from slot machines scattered about inside the airport terminals.

According to a report in the Arizona Republic, the mayor in Phoenix, Arizona thinks putting slot machines at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is a great idea. But Phoenix isn’t Nevada, where gambling is legal pretty much everywhere. So to make this idea work, the city would have to create a profit-sharing agreement with a Native American tribe.

It’s do-able, but not yet a done-deal. The paper reports that the slot-machine scheme is just one of the ideas a revenue-enhancement team is exploring to help solve budget shortfalls for the entire city of Phoenix.

Got some other ideas? Casey Newton at the Arizona Republic (casey.newton@arizonarepublic.com) has offered to gather them up and forward them on to the mayor who, he says, “will give you – at his own expense – a weekend at the downtown Sheraton, complete with tickets to a sporting event or other cultural experience” if the city uses your idea.