CLEVELAND, Ohio – A $1.5 million grant to the nonprofit LAND Studio from the Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation of Cleveland will kick off three years of temporary outdoor art installations on the renovated Public Square and the Mall, starting just before the Republican National Convention.

Beginning in June, the Italian art collective Cracking Art, based in Milan, will install hundreds of colorful plastic meerkats, wolves, swallows, frogs and snails on the Mall and at the Cleveland Public Library and adjacent Eastman Reading Garden.

  In July, after the $50 million renovation of Public Square is completed and opened to the public, the animals will sprinkle bright dabs of color on the lawns, plazas and hillsides of the 10-acre civic space.

More to come

Future phases of the three-year Fowler grant will fund large-scale temporary installations by major global contemporary artists, more intimately scaled projects by local and regional artists, and changing displays of locally generated art on the rear wall of the square's outdoor cafe.

"We've never had a grant like this,'' Ann Zoller, executive director of LAND Studio, said in a recent interview, referring to the Fowlers' largess.

"We want to bring things to Public Square and the Mall that are really going to knock people out," said Greg Peckham, LAND Studio's managing director.

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