George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Critics Voice Objections to MoMA’s Plan to Take Down Folk Art Museum" @nytimes by ROBIN POGREBIN
| To the surprise of perhaps no one, including the Museum of Modern Art, the decision to take down the former home of the American Folk Art Museum as part of a redesign of MoMA’s Midtown Manhattan building provoked strong reactions on Thursday from architects and critics.
“I’m very disappointed,” said Robert A. M. Stern, the dean of Yale’s School of Architecture. “Justice has not been served.
“It’s a work of art, especially the facade,” he added of the Folk Art building, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, which opened in 2001 and features a textured bronze exterior.
Having announced plans in April to demolish the folk museum, MoMA revisited the decision after protests from architects, urban planners and preservationists. But the architectural firm charged with that evaluation, Diller Scofidio & Renfro, concluded that saving the building was unworkable, even as it proposed that MoMA undertake a more comprehensive rethinking of its physical complex.
MoMA now plans to make its current building — designed by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi nine years ago in a $858 million renovation — more open and welcoming. The plans include improving circulation in the lobby and making the entire ground level free to the public. The folk art site will hold two stacked glass-fronted spaces for exhibitions and performances.
Architecture critics quickly weighed in against the demolition plan. “A city that allows such a work to disappear after barely a dozen years is a city with a flawed architectural heart,” Paul Goldberger wrote on Vanity Fair’s website.
Jerry Saltz, on New York magazine site, said that during MoMA’s presentation of the project, “I felt my eyes tear up and my stomach turn.”
“I have seen the best modern museum of my generation destroyed by madness,” he wrote. “Goodbye, MoMA. I loved you.”
Not every reaction was negative. Thom Mayne, who designed the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art’s new building in Manhattan, said MoMA’s populist instincts were on target — an important antidote to the building’s current aesthetic. “It needs that more relaxed, open, less precious quality,” he said.
And he commended MoMA’s use of the folk art site as responsive to a shift among museums toward presenting alternative art forms. “The first order of business is to produce space that’s relevant to the art they’re going to present in this century,” he said.
After a public-relations offensive this week that included detailed briefings for journalists, MoMA officials declined to comment on the reactions on Thursday. Mr. Taniguchi also has not commented on the decision to adjust his building’s design, but MoMA’s director, Glenn D. Lowry, said the architect had been briefed on the plan and had not protested.
“A number of these gestures are gestures he had anticipated,” Mr. Lowry said. “He wants his building to work well.”
Museum officials have said they have not formulated a budget yet for the sweeping redesign of the MoMA complex on West 53rd Street, which is to be completed by 2019. The project has about $5 million in the city’s capital budget, funds that were allocated in fiscal 2012.
Many architects said they feel badly for Mr. Williams and Ms. Tsien, whose folk art building was a breakout project that raised the husband-and-wife team’s profile. “It’s devastating to them,” the architect Frank Gehry said. “It’s like tearing down my house in Santa Monica. It’s their kind of beginning.”
“We all loved it when it was done; it was a major piece of architecture on the street,” he added. “I think Billie and Tod deserve a major project in New York City, and let’s get it for them and get on with it. That will get them their dignity back.”
It remains to be seen whether the Diller firm — led by Liz Diller; her husband, Ricardo Scofidio; and Charles Renfro — are held personally accountable for MoMA’s decision. “None of them are responsible for the organization of MoMA that led to making these decisions,” Mr. Gehry said. “It’s not Liz’s fault, it’s not Ric’s fault, it’s not Billie’s fault, it’s not Tod’s fault. Architects work for clients.”
MoMA’s plans include opening its sculpture garden to the public, a decision that is also stirring debate.
“While I think it’s well intentioned to open the garden to the public, the garden since my childhood was an oasis of quiet,” Mr. Stern said.
Now, Mr. Stern added, that sense of calm will be compromised. “It’s lost in the galleries,” he said, “and now I think it’s going to be lost in the garden.”
But Mr. Mayne applauded the decision to open the garden. “It makes it part of the public spaces of New York, and not this private thing,” he said. “It’s not tranquil anymore. It’s a highly dense urban space in the middle of Midtown Manhattan.”
Mr. Mayne was somewhat existential about the whole thing. “All of our work is somewhat ephemeral,” he said.
The architect Richard Meier, whose projects include the Getty Center in Los Angeles, was similarly resigned. “This was a good work, but New York City is ever changing,” he said. “Not everything lasts forever, and sometimes you have to let go.”
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