Light on the river: public art as policy, and SB150

2015 - 2025

The sculpture: On 22 May 2015, the exact 150th anniversary of South Bend's incorporation, the city unveiled the South Bend River Lights: an interactive light sculpture by the artist Rob Shakespeare, more than 200 lights washing the St. Joseph River's falls and both banks, towers called the Light Trio and the Light Forest, a Crescent of light, the Jefferson Boulevard Bridge of 1905 lit from beneath, and light played around Mark di Suvero's 1980 sculpture Keepers of the Fire. The work cost a reported $750,000 within a $25 million downtown renewal project planned from 2012, responds to motion, and runs on the river's own hydroelectric power. Its unveiling ceremony included performers of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and a special SB150 community choir: the first peoples of the river bend honoured at the lighting of its falls. Parts of the work were stored during Notre Dame's hydroelectric plant construction and the Seitz Park renovation, and restored for the park's reopening on 17 July 2025. The comparison with Fort Wayne belongs here: Fort Wayne got its public art programme by ordinance in 2018; South Bend got its signature public artwork as a birthday present in 2015, a single great gesture rather than a standing programme, each city true to its funding character as this section has drawn it.

The birthday: The River Lights were the centrepiece of SB150, the yearlong sesquicentennial chaired by Aaron Perri of Downtown South Bend Inc. The year opened at a January First Friday with the mayor reading the sesquicentennial proclamation from the balcony of the dark State Theatre, and peaked in the Birthday Weekend of 22 to 24 May 2015: the River Lights dedication, Ben Folds in concert with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra on the Century Center grounds, the Jefferson Street Bridge covered in sod as a picnic green, a Taste of South Bend of nearly 50 food vendors, the return of the Gus Macker basketball tournament, and a Memory Lane exhibition of 150 years of the city's photographs. A factory city fifty years past its factory's closing threw itself a yearlong party whose programme was, item for item, this section's table of contents: the symphony, the river, the food of its peoples, its photographs and its light. SB150 is the moment South Bend's culture stopped being a set of institutions and performed itself as a single civic work. The city's sesquicentennial self-portrait hangs, fittingly, on the river, and it lights up at night.

Sources:

1. South Bend River Lights reference accounts and PLSN and Lighting and Sound America, December 2015 (Rob Shakespeare's sculpture unveiled 22 May 2015; more than 200 lights; the Light Trio, Light Forest, Crescent, the Jefferson Boulevard Bridge and di Suvero's Keepers of the Fire of 1980; motion activation and hydroelectric power; the $750,000 cost and the $25 million renewal project; the Pokagon Band performers and the SB150 choir; the Seitz Park restoration and reopening of 17 July 2025).
2. Notre Dame Magazine, A City Aglow (the River Lights and the city's 150th year).
3. City of South Bend newsletter, April to May 2015, and the South Bend Parks and Recreation annual report for 2015 (the SB150 Birthday Weekend of 22 to 24 May 2015; the River Lights dedication; Ben Folds with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra; the sodded Jefferson Street Bridge; the Taste of South Bend; the Gus Macker return; the Children's area and the East Race).
4. Associated Press report of January 2015, carried in the Princeton Daily Clarion (the yearlong celebration; SB150 committee chair Aaron Perri; the January kickoff at the State Theatre; the art museum presentation by the River Lights' designer).
5. Building South Bend, University of Notre Dame (SB150 as the yearlong community-wide celebration culminating in the Birthday Weekend of 22 to 24 May 2015).