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In mid-May, Turkish American artist Refik Anadol flew in experts to troubleshoot the $400,000 crystalline art installation that he’d created for the city of Portland four years ago.
The piece, called Data Crystal: Portland, is a cloudlike cluster of plastic cubes made on a 3D printer. It hangs from the ceiling in the Portland Building, adjacent to City Hall, where four projectors cast public domain images of Portland, illuminating it.
The piece needed minor repairs, but the technician from Anadol’s studio in Los Angeles couldn’t make them because a 6-by-14-foot mural of a Chinese water tiger, a symbol of power and courage in Chinese culture, was partially blocking access to Anadol’s piece. So carpenters from Portland Parks & Recreation took the water tiger mural down May 21 and put it in storage.
And then Bobby Lee, chief of staff to Mayor Ted Wheeler, found out about it.
For three days, he sent a volley of scorching emails to city staffers, accusing them of cultural insensitivity and disrespect for the Asian American Pacific Islander community. Moreover, he claimed, the move was illegal.
One thing that could make it right, according to Lee? Have the city pay the artist $40,000 to $50,000 to create more pieces for the city.
That artist is a 17-year-old high school student. She is also the niece of an ex-girlfriend of Lee’s, whom he dated for a year before the relationship ended in 2023.
Lee had a hand in creating the mural, too. A year earlier, Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency, provided $105,000 in city funds to the Waterfront Blues Festival. At Lee’s request, the festival allocated $30,000 of that to Lee’s pet project. No other art projects were considered.
The odd episode raises questions about Lee’s influence at City Hall, where he has served as Wheeler’s chief of staff since February 2021, making him one of the mayor’s longest-serving confidants.
Lee answered a few of WW’s questions about the water tiger. About the request for a five-figure grant for the artist after the mural came down, he said in a statement: “The funding never happened. But if it did, I agree that it should go through a competitive process.”
Lee didn’t answer questions about whether he abused his position by requesting as much as $50,000 for a young artist with whom he had a social connection. Nor would he address whether his personal relationship with the artist represented a conflict of interest when he directed the Waterfront Blues Festival to spend $30,000 constructing her art.
Mayor Wheeler did not respond to a request for comment.
Lee has a long history of public service at the highest levels. He became the first Asian American president of the student body at the University of Oregon, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He served on the Eugene City Council and worked for two governors, John Kitzhaber and Kate Brown. He was director of economic development at Prosper Portland before going to work for the city of Seattle. He returned to Portland to become chief of staff to Mayor Wheeler.
Sensing a need to boost civic spirit, Lee declared the Chinese water tiger the symbol of the city’s resiliency in 2022 as it struggled to regain its footing after the racial justice protests of 2020 and the hollowing of downtown due to COVID-19.
At the time, Lee was dating a policy adviser to City Commissioner Mingus Mapps. She brought her high school-age niece to City Hall for Bring a Kid to Work Day in 2022. During the visit, Lee talked to a group of youngsters about the water tiger. Moved by his speech, Lee says, the young artist sketched a water tiger for him. (The artist, a minor, and her mother declined to comment.)
Lee was smitten. He plastered the design on T-shirts and ball caps for the mayor’s staff. He projected it on the outside of City Hall during the 2023 Portland Winter Light Festival.
“Wheeler’s top aide has been on a one-man mission to make it City Hall’s unofficial mascot,” The Oregonian reported in February 2023.
The water tiger got even more exposure that summer. At the Waterfront Blues Festival, the high schooler—alongside Wheeler—unveiled a $24,000 interactive mural she’d designed. Festivalgoers Sharpied “big ideas” for Portland in blue blurbs around the mythical animal.
The money came out of a $1.5 million allocation from the City Council in 2022 to stand up a new events office in Prosper Portland. At the time, city commissioners didn’t know exactly how the dollars would be spent, just that they would be. Prosper awarded an initial $75,000 to the festival. Then, after the initial funding, blues festival spokeswoman Frances Dyer says, “Bobby Lee communicated that there were $30,000 in funds to be spent on the water tiger project.” Dyer says the water tiger art pieces were funded “at the request” of the mayor’s office.
Little of the money went to the young artist. She received a $500 stipend from Wheeler’s office, a spokesman said. Dyer says the event paid her a $599 “honorarium” for her work and reimbursed her $320 for supplies. (The bulk of the money went to the local art studio that printed the mural and constructed it.)
After the festival, Lee had the mural moved to City Hall. The mayor’s office spent $3,280 from its own budget. The itinerant tiger moved again earlier this year, when workers began renovating City Hall to squeeze 12 new City Council members into space long occupied by four.
Lee directed that the water tiger be moved, at a cost of $2,114, to the Portland Building. It landed in front of Anadol’s floating crystal art sculpture at the wrong time.
On May 21, city carpenters took down the mural and put it in a storage closet. Lee found out and immediately fired off emails to the Office of Arts & Culture and top staff for Commissioner Dan Ryan, who oversaw the arts office at the time. In addition to claiming the removal violated city code, Lee said it was also “outrageous and disrespectful to the young Asian American Pacific Islander artist.”
At no point in the email chain, obtained by WW in a public records request, did Lee acknowledge that the artist was the niece of his former romantic partner.
“The mural was moved today against my direction,” Lee wrote in an email to several city staffers. In another email, he called the removal “offensive.”
Chariti Montez, director of the Office of Arts & Culture, assured Lee the mural would find a new home at another city building. The mayoral chief of staff was not placated.
“The Water Tiger art was done by the high school student of color,” Lee wrote. “For you to unilaterally remove the art without our consent is disrespectful.”
Lee kept at it the next day, and demanded a fix. “Office of Arts & Culture should be working to raise [her] voice, not to put her work in a box locked up in an attic,” he wrote to city staff on May 22. “I would like a grant (around $40K to $50K) to help pay [the artist] to paint a large mural or two on sides of downtown building/s.”
Ryan’s chief of staff, T.J. McHugh, wrote back a day later: “There is no money available for ad hoc grants.” Less than an hour later, McHugh wrote to top arts office staff, saying he and Lee had agreed the city should find a new home for the water tiger.
For the moment, the matter appeared to be resolved.
“Hold on,” Lee wrote to McHugh and other top staff an hour later. “I spoke to the Mayor. Here is his direction: The Water Tiger mural was removed illegally. Therefore he believes it should be put back where it was as soon as possible.”
“Illegally removed is not the correct choice of words,” McHugh wrote back.
“Here we go again,” Lee retorted, repeating his claim that the removal violated city code.
McHugh wrote back: “I think all can agree there has been enough emails on this topic and we need to move forward.”
On Tuesday afternoon, the wandering water tiger found a new home. It’s back on the first floor of the Portland Building, but not in front of Data Crystal: Portland.