Art is about symbols. The crudest is a good way to explain why it’s so hard to fill an empty circle in Annapolis.

Shelly Bancroft believed she was picked by the mayor to solve the riddle of Westgate Circle, a raised roundabout that is the boundary of downtown. She quit with an obscene flourish eight months later.

At the end of her final Art in Public Places Committee meeting, she flipped everyone the bird on her way out of both Zoom and her appointment.

“I don’t think a lot of people saw it,” Bancroft said. “Most, most people didn’t see. It was very subtle. But yes, I did it to the whole commission, and then I walked away. OK?

“And then I resigned. OK?”

Art is hard. It’s hard when you’re broke and no one appreciates your vision.

Even with money coming in every year it’s proving especially difficult to move ahead on the city’s largest, most ambitious public art project so far.

Five years after artist Bobby Donovan tore down his beloved, quirky sculpture, “Shoal,” the committee tasked with replacing it has gotten nowhere.

Art is also full of promise. Turns out Bancroft’s rash gesture, capping months of hard feelings, might finally get efforts to complete the circle moving again.

“Next year,” committee chair Lyn Farrow said. “Certainly.”

Committee members thought they had a solution in 2023. They called for proposals, paid finalists to create renderings and asked the public to comment.

“Gruesome.” “Awful.” Those were some of the kinder responses. New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz was the harshest, calling them “three shitty public sculptures.”

The committee scrapped the ideas, members resigned. Farrow was named chair to clean up the mess.

“95% of all public sculpture is crap because it is left to large bureaucratic systems,” Saltz wrote in his punchy assessment.

Even tiny bureaucracies.

Bancroft and Farrow never clicked. One is a curator who says she knows art when she sees it, the other a state transportation executive who says she knows how government works.

“She called me an elitist in meetings several times, and I found that very offensive,” Bancroft said.

Farrow says she was responding to being dismissed as unqualified.

“No one dismisses my qualifications,” Farrow said.

Then in October, Farrow passed over Bancroft to lead the Westgate Circle project. Despite objections from other members, she didn’t even make the subcommittee.

Bancroft, who overstates her appointment by Mayor Gavin Buckley, was distraught. That’s when she popped the finger.

“I am all for having the community involved, having an open discussion, doing an open call,” Bancroft said. “But there are many different ways to do it that can speed up the process.”

The root of all this is not the personality squabbles. It’s the money.

Three years ago, state lawmakers mandated a split in city hotel taxes, dedicating 3% to the arts panel — $777,000 so far. Not a lot of money, but a fortune compared to meager past budgets.

It just hasn’t paid for much art.

The committee listed $160,000 in grants last year. Most went to festivals and a parade, museum exhibits and free student programs.

The money funded one major artwork, “Every Child Has the Right to be Born a Healthy Child” by Jeff Huntington at the Parole Health Center. The committee awarded the nonprofit center $10,000 for it.

There have been some mistakes.

In February, Farrow adjourned the meeting only to reconvene minutes later because the panel forgot to vote on a $10,000 grant to the Arts Council of Anne Arundel County for utility box art wraps.

There has been confusion.

City officials couldn’t find a 2023 end-of-year report, something the committee is required to submit. Members complained they couldn’t follow Farrow’s monthly financial updates.

Created in 2001 and led for years by former Mayor Ellen Moyer, the committee has been led by strong-willed chairs with a vision for making Annapolis beautiful.

With the money, though, the job changed. It became about wielding power to control funding for the arts.

“It’s a lot,” Farrow said. “These are all volunteers.”

After resigning, Bancroft emailed complaints to the mayor and the City Council. Often.

The result is legislation shifting support for the committee from Recreation and Parks to Planning and Zoning. It approves permits for art projects.

It would give the planning and zoning director power to influence art decisions. The committee would have to consider his recommendations under the bill.

Director Chris Jakubiak popped into the March meeting on Zoom, along with several city staff members who explained they would offer additional help. They’ve given committee members training on improving the grant process, managing the money and working together.

If the legislation passes, they would have to explain future art and funding choices publicly.

“I’m really heartened to see the way all of the commissioners are stepping up, and trying to come together as a team and forge some shared vision,” said Cate Pettit, Buckley’s chief of staff.

The March meeting was more orderly than February, and a world apart from October. Nobody flipped the bird and left. Nobody got called an elitist.

There was, however, disappointment.

Committee members hoped the state would provide the $250,000 needed to complete the Westgate Circle project. State lawmakers, Farrow said, told city officials they would not support it this year.

The committee has $50,000 for planning, but Farrow won’t start again until all of the money is approved.

Bancroft, despite her departure, remains eager to see something fill the empty knoll.

“I had this one idea that was kicking around in my brain for a while, and it’s something in the form of a Liberty Tree,” she said. “It’s based on, like, you know the word liberty right now is kind of fraught, but sort of recapturing what it means.”

In the end, art is about people.

Whatever ends up on Westgate Circle, it will be a monument to the bureaucracy they use to create art in Annapolis.