Lollipops Revisited: Ada Louise Huxtable on the New Museum of Arts and Design

Better late than never, the Wall Street Journal's esteemed architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable (above), administers a good spanking to the NY Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff, in her much-awaited review today of architect Brad Cloepfil's reclad and reconfigured Museum of Arts and Design.

As you may remember, Ouroussoff in September consigned Cloepfil's just completed MAD to his list of New York buildings that should be "candidates for demolition."

Without naming him, Ada Louise implicitly targeted Ouroussoff in her pointed and perceptive appraisal in today's WSJ of the reclad and reconfigured Edward Durell Stone-designed museum building that she had famously described at the time of its opening in 1964 as "a die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollypops [sic]."

She began today's MAD dash by bashing "the reviews [that] have set some kind of record for irresponsible over-the-top building-bashing." (Ouroussoff's demolition wish surely wins, hands down, for most "over-the-top.") She then debunked others who, to buttress their arguments for preservation, had created "a mythology of [the Stone building's] architectural significance." And finally, she put the wrecking ball to the preservationists' arguments by noting that the façade was "past reasonable preservation or repair" and the building was "in serious disrepair."

As the doyenne of architecture criticism sees it:

Once the original is gone or beyond salvation you are faking it; when it's lost, let it go and move on...This [Cloepfil's makeover] is a thoughtful and skillful, if imperfect conversion.

Its chief imperfection, in Huxtable's view, is the horizontal picture window for the as-yet-unopened restaurant. That expanse of glass was added over the strong opposition of the architect.

You can hear my previous WNYC radio commentary on the building and its contents here. My comments of Sept. 23 were in harmony with Ada Louise's today: The original building was an iconic, even loved, touchstone for New Yorkers (like me) who grew up with it. But it was not a great work of architecture and it's time to let it go. Cloepfil sympathetically acknowledged our nostalgia by preserving the original's shape and color.

The rest is history...as it should be. But Ada Louise's own history is still unfolding: She's just come out with a new book. Tonight she receives the Museum of the City of New York's Louis Auchincloss Prize, for "writers and artists whose work is inspired by and enhances the five boroughs of New York City."

Write on!