Phoenix Points of Pride
Phoenix, Arizona may be a city fashioned out of the North American desert, but the destination city for ICA's 62nd Annual Conference has become a garden spot of population, industry, and, yes, culture in its short lifetime. It's a thoroughly modern richness, even if it draws from the region's sometimes distant history, and it's expressed in the list of civic attributes known as the Phoenix Points of Pride.
The Points of Pride came into being 2 decades ago, in 1991, when the city was suffering a low point in its reputation and morale. The then mayor, Paul Johnson, responded by forming a civic commission that would select and promote a group of attractions, natural and manmade, that could serve as a rallying point for Phoenix's citizens and a reminder that they lived in a truly great city. The commission solicited nominations from the public, placed the best ones on a ballot, and invited the city to vote on their favorite in-town destinations. Forty thousand Phoenicians participated in the vote in 1992, and their top 25 choices were officially designated the Phoenix Points of Pride that year.
The program has proved to be wildly successful. The destinations on the list have seen their annual visits increase by hundreds of thousands, from both native Phoenicians and tourists. The commission has continuously added new attractions to the list; as of 2012, there are 33 Points of Pride. The December issue of the ICA Newsletter covered four of these: the US Airways Center, Heritage Square, Symphony Hall, and the Orpheum Theatre. The list is much deeper, however, containing a variety of natural and constructed landmarks that collectively portray the richness of the Phoenix experience.
Most prominent among these is undoubtedly Camelback Mountain, the 1,300-foot formation of granite and red sandstone on the city's northeastern edge. One look at it will answer any questions about the mountain's name. Camelback Mountain is a city park that is a favorite for hikers, with trails all the way to the summit of the distinctive peak. It's also a popular destination for rock climbers - in particular one of its formations, the 100-foot The Praying Monk (named, like the mountain, for what it resembles) - and lovers of the wild. There are even opportunities to get a glimpse of ancient history: Low in the mountain's northwest corner is a cave that was used as a sacred site by the prehistoric Hohokam civilization.
The Hohokam and later Native American peoples are an important part of Phoenix, past and present, an area of inquiry that the Heard Museum seeks to address. Arguably the foremost Native American archive in the United States, the Heard includes 40,000 artifacts, contemporary items, and 34,000 volumes in its research library. The most prized among these are featured in the museum's flagship exhibition, "Home: Native People in the Southwest." There are several other exhibits, rotating and ongoing, including the acclaimed "Remembering Our Indian School Days." This exhibit explores the experience and effects of the late 19th-century policy of forcing Native American children into boarding schools meant to assimilate ("civilize") them into European-American culture.
Just a few blocks down Central Avenue from the Heard Museum is another Point of Pride museum, the Phoenix Art Museum. This is the largest visual art museum in the southwestern United States, with 285,000 square feet containing more than 18,000 pieces. The collection falls into nine categories: American (including such artists as John Singleton Copley, Robert Henri, and Gilbert Stuart); Western American (Frederic Remington, Maynard Dixon, Georgia O'Keeffe); Asian (Zhou Xiaoming, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, and unknown artists from the ancient world); European (Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Euguen Fromentin); Latin American (Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Carlos Orozco Romero); Modern (Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Willem de Kooning); Contemporary (Anish Kapoor, Sol Lewitt, Donald Judd); Photography (Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Edward Weston); and Fashion.
On the southeast side of the city lies Papago Park. A vast swath (1200 acres) of desert land, the park is first distinguished by its enormous sandstone buttes. However, it's also frequented for its lake, hiking and biking trails, and baseball and softball fields. Additionally, there are three other Points of Pride within the park. Hole-in-the-Rock is a natural formation in one of the red sandstone buttes: a large cave with roughly parallel openings on either side of the hill, a literal hole eroded through the rock from which the entire Phoenix Valley can be viewed. The Desert Botanical Garden, now in its 75th year, includes 21,000 desert plants in over 50,000 displays, one-third of them native to the U.S. Southwest; it is a rare botanical garden to be certified as a museum. Near the center of the park is the Phoenix Zoo, the nation's largest nonprofit zoo, with 1300 animals subdivided among four displays (Arizonan, African, tropical, and children's) as well as a popular exhibit of stingrays and bamboo sharks.
The Point of Pride closest to the ICA Conference is a manmade structure; however, it's less important for its history or architecture than for the events that take place there. The Herberger Theater Center is located just one block from the conference hotel, the Phoenix Downtown Sheraton. The Herberger, founded and built in 1989, contains three stages and is home to three resident theater companies as well as two other local groups who sometimes perform there. One of its most unique and celebrated features is Lunch Time Theater. The program presents a one-act play - 30 to 45 minutes - at 12:10 p.m. every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoon.
These are only some of the highlights of a group that includes 21 more Points of Pride. The ones described here, however, are the ones probably best suited to ICA members who will be attending "Communication and Community," the 2012 Conference of the International Communication Association. They're as beloved by locals as by visitors, and a visit to any will fulfill the name that the city has given them - demonstrating that Phoenix has much to be proud of.