MeTube: Glenn Lowry Defends MoMA Monster; Knox Gets Notched

While we await the next stage (back today to the City Planning Commission) in the MoMA Monster's journey through New York City's convoluted government approval process, let's have a return engagement today of the CultureGrrl Channel's video star, the Museum of Modern Art's director, Glenn Lowry.

You can watch him argue for the benefits to MoMA of Jean Nouvel's Empire State Building-height tower (now downsized to mere Chrysler Building height) at the hearing of a City Council subcommittee of its Land Use Committee that occurred two weeks ago. That's Lowry on the left, the project's attorney Michael Sillerman on the right. Once you roll 'em, you'll also see architect Nouvel, left.

(If you just can't get enough, you can view a second, longer version of Lowry's testimony here, on the CultureGrrl Channel.)



As I drove back up the westside from that hearing, I passed by the remains of the late, lamented Knox Martin "Venus" mural, all but obliterated by the in-construction Nouvel luxury apartment tower that the French architect probably visited while he was in New York.

Wait a minute! When we last saw Martin's mural, it had been reduced to a mere sliver:

KnoxHid.jpg

But when I most recently viewed it, the 85-year-old artist's oeuvre had been reduced to a mere signature---the mega-letters that Knox had added last year to his 1970 mural, in a stealth protest. Here's what "Venus" (which should now be retitled "KNOX") looked like a couple of weeks ago, when I took a passing shot at it through my car's sun roof:

KnoxNotch1.jpg
It's the Knox Notch!

Will this grudging accommodation still remain when 100 Eleventh Avenue is completed? Will the northmost apartments, abutting the women's prison to the left, have windows allowing privileged views of the parts of Martin's colorful abstraction that no one else will ever see?

Frankly, if I were the developers, I wouldn't want to mess with this guy:

Knox.jpeg
Knox Martin today
October 19, 2009 11:23 AM | |

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CULTUREGRRL (Lee Rosenbaum) is the artworld's award-winning "best blog."

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LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I'm a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, and on arts blogging at American University.

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MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection(museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
New Modern Wing at Art Institute of Chicago
Michael Conforti Profile
Making Sales Look Stronger
Lee Krasner's "Little Image "Paintings
Ando-Designed Stone Hill Center for Conservation and Clark Exhibitions
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Her Art Came First: Anne d'Harnoncourt's Labor of Love

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Art in the Obama White House
Museum of Arts and Design Opens
New Met Director, Brian Lehrer Show
Tom Campbell Named Met Director
Whitney Museum's Expansion
Fake Coptic Art at Brooklyn Museum
Spring '08 Art Auctions
Should Veterans or Newcomers Lead Arts Organizations?
Murakami at Brooklyn Museum
Whitney Biennial
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on Fall '07 Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Philadelphia Museum's "Gross Clinic" Deaccessions
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on October 19, 2009 11:23 AM.

I Love You, "Birdie"! (no matter what the critics say) UPDATED was the previous entry in this blog.

Why I’m Donating to WQXR (and why you should support CultureGrrl) is the next entry in this blog.

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