I didn't plan for my first post on Free Ride to be about crime, but I also didn't expect to wake up to a murder outside my front door. But I saved the real-time skinny for G.p:
Cappseus: dude. murder in my neighborhood this morning.But it's not even that hot yet!
KvnMustPay: if you remember, kriston, 50 fortold this: "in the hood, the summertime is the killin' season/ it's hot up in this bitch, and that's a good enough reason."
. . . uh, probably I could be less callous about this. Gotta work on those human emotions.
In today's CP I've got an item on "Compelled by Content II" at Fraser Gallery. One of these days I'll see whether I can add an item to ye ol' sidebar so I'm not posting the same CP notice every week. In other admin news, I've received a couple of complaints that my e-mail address isn't readily available on the blog, so it's on the sidebar now, bright as day. So shoot me a line, no, fire away, I mean, write me if you please.
I like to sit down to see a show with a crowd that's bustling with energy, but a theater crowded with eigth graders is a bit much for me. It's nice and progressive for a junior-high class to take an evening fieldtrip to see a play in the city. It's just not a fieldtrip that I'm particularly interested in joining. I mean, come on. Tony Kushner uses words like cock—eighth graders are constitutionally bound to giggle at the naughty words! I saw one audience member beating another with a program—that's not what programs are for! Kudos to the sympathetic staff, who knew exactly what I needed when I stepped out of the theater space and set me up with tix for tomorrow night. I hate to be a grade-A little bitch about things, but God, children.
So I've seen the first -5 minutes of the play, and it appears that someone at the theater plays music before the show starts. It's A Bright Room Called Day, so shouldn't someone throw the new Dresden Dolls in the mix?
The shortlist of things to see:
A hardy welcome to Free Ride, a new city blog launched by the Express (that's the free daily published by the Washington Post). I'm happy to tell you that I'll be contributing local arts and culture coverage. I'm pleased to join the prolific Mr. Grass and inestimable Metrocurean, who will be writing food and entertainment. I think it's gonna be 'core.
And right out of the gate, there's material that ought to interest readers here: Last night Grass saw starchitect Rem Koolhaas speak at the National Building Museum. You can check out Grass's writeup here. I'd loved to have seen Koolhaas speak, but seats were a little pricey, and I was in Virginia to see my friend Valerie's senior show. (Every once in a while, I break my Virginia travel prohibition. This trip took me to a university in the middle of a forest, where they apparently grow dark-horse basketball teams.) Frankly, I'd like to know whether OMA architects spend as much time in Beijing nowadays as I imagine they do. Anyway—Free Ride launches officially on Monday, but you can take a peak now.
More Mies in the news: The owner of the Villa Urbig refuses to allow the Churchill Society to erect a plaque on the property honoring Churchill's 1945 stay at the home during the Potsdam Conference. Not much meat to this story—from the sounds of it, the owner merely doesn't want his residence to be a tourist destination—but I thought I'd pass it along.
DCist graciously lent me their megaphone on Sunday to opinionize on the Mies. Some of my thoughts follow from the Saturday town-hall meeting. And the rest of those thoughts from Saturday, I shouldn't say in polite company.
Play around with this fun nuclear holocaust site for a second. Now, answer me this: Why is it that a jump from a 45- to a 50-kiloton nuclear payload registers a change in the immediate zone of destruction from raging fires to immense pressure blast? You can clearly see with the slide that there's some kind of function at hand, but it's 8:30 on Friday and I have dreadful work to do, and do you think this site delivers?
Don't mess with the Architect.
I signed up to speak tomorrow at the Mies, for the Mies. If you live in the District and you value high visual culture, or box-y shapes, stop by the MLK Library at 1 p.m. to watch Councilmember Kathy Peterson wither under the cadence of my searing, hardboiled questions. (Well, no promises. I have about as much time to prepare as the public was given advance time on this Council-recess town hall meeting by Mayor Williams.)
Sommer forwarded me a letter from Alex Padro, an ANC commissioner, former library trustee, and current G.p man crush. His considerations echo and expand on my own, plus he knows what he's talking about, so I'm including his full letter below the cut. Key lines—a ballpark estimate for renovating the Mies:
No one who has visited the MLK Library can dispute that after 30 years of neglect and deferred maintenance due to budget crunches, the building is in need of an overhaul. In 2000, while I served on the DC Library Board of Trustees, the Urban Design Committee of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects prepared a plan that would transform the library into a more welcoming and functioning place, while respecting the original architect's vision.Keep reading below, then come by the MLK Memorial Library tomorrow (April 22) at 1:00 pm for some ultimate fighting.These plans included adding the fifth story that was originally provided for, replacing the warren of offices in the center of the building's upper floors with a skylit atrium extending from the second to fifth floors, a new theater-style auditorium and art gallery space, and space for events that could be rented out for corporate events, weddings, and the like, with rooftop gardens. This was a compelling vision that Mayor Williams accepted, and one that was comparable in cost to building a new library of equal size elsewhere. [emphasis added]
Then Andrew Altman was hired as the director of the Office of Planning and decided that what DC really needed was a new, smaller downtown library at the old Convention Center site as a cultural anchor, and that the historic MLK library should be disposed of. Preservationists and community leaders responded that the building should be renovated so it could continue to serve its intended purpose, not be replaced, with the natural fear that if the building was no longer city property, it might be horribly altered or demolished. Altman has come and gone, but his nefarious plan is still here, and could become a reality. And the Historic Preservation Review Board refuses to hear the landmark application that has been filed for the Mies building until the library decides what it wants to do with it.
URGENT: Stop Possible Loss of Mies Designed Library in DC, 04/22/06 Many RPPN members have asked me during the past several years what they could do to help save the endangered Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in Downtown Washington, DC (see http://www.recentpast.org/types/library/mlklib/index.html for details and photos). The time has come when an outcry from across the nation could help stop the potential loss of this important building, the only library building Mies ever designed.A town hall meeting to collect public opinion on Mayor Anthony A. Williams' proposal to lease the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library (MLK Library), one of the nation's first tributes to our nation's preeminent civil rights leaders, will be held on Saturday, April 22, 2006, at 1:00 PM at the library, located at 901 G Street, NW. If you live in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, I urge you to call the office of the DC Council's Committee on Education, Libraries, and Recreation at 202-724-8195 and register to speak against this proposal at the town hall meeting. If you do not live in the area, please see the end of this message to learn how you can still register your opinion.
Mayor Williams has quietly included in the city's Fiscal Year 2007 budget a provision that he be given the authority to lease the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library for 99 years to an entity yet to be determined. This lame-duck mayor would use the proceeds to pay for part of the construction of a new central public library building at the site of the city's old Convention Center, currently a parking lot, two blocks away from the current main library.
No one who has visited the MLK Library can dispute that after 30 years of neglect and deferred maintenance due to budget crunches, the building is in need of an overhaul. In 2000, while I served on the DC Library Board of Trustees, the Urban Design Committee of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects prepared a plan that would transform the library into a more welcoming and functioning place, while respecting the original architect's vision.
These plans included adding the fifth story that was originally provided for, replacing the warren of offices in the center of the building's upper floors with a skylit atrium extending from the second to fifth floors, a new theater-style auditorium and art gallery space, and space for events that could be rented out for corporate events, weddings, and the like, with rooftop gardens. This was a compelling vision that Mayor Williams accepted, and one that was comparable in cost to building a new library of equal size elsewhere.
Then Andrew Altman was hired as the director of the Office of Planning and decided that what DC really needed was a new, smaller downtown library at the old Convention Center site as a cultural anchor, and that the historic MLK library should be disposed of. Preservationists and community leaders responded that the building should be renovated so it could continue to serve its intended purpose, not be replaced, with the natural fear that if the building was no longer city property, it might be horribly altered or demolished. Altman has come and gone, but his nefarious plan is still here, and could become a reality. And the Historic Preservation Review Board refuses to hear the landmark application that has been filed for the Mies building until the library decides what it wants to do with it.
DC residents remember that the last time the city entered into a long-term lease for a major public building, the Wilson Building, our city hall, at a time when we could not afford to renovate it ourselves, the District government had to spend millions to get the building back from the developer a few years later. The District government needs to learn from the mistakes it has made in the past and not lease major public buildings like the MLK Library while they are still needed for their intended purposes, just because we don't have the cash in hand to renovate them.
Our city has been able to find a way to fund what will ultimately be a $1 billion dollar baseball stadium. We need to similarly agree to renovate a landmark building that houses an institution that is both a tribute to one of the most important leaders our country has ever known, an institution intended to uplift and enrich all of our citizens, at a cost that is comparable to constructing a building of the same size as we currently own.
Selling or leasing the space allotted for a new library on the old Convention Center site and using the proceeds to help pay for renovating the MLK Library makes far more sense. Together with income from renting out space for special events, a cafe and bookstore in the building, and leasing out excess space in the MLK Library if indeed less space is needed than the renovated building would offer would also help offset the cost of renovations, making it possible for the Council and a new mayor (Williams is not running for reelection, and his term ends this year) to move forward and transform the current library into the 21st century learning and cultural center that our city deserves, preserving Mies' legacy.
The long and the short of the current situation is that Williams, afraid that public opinion would kill another of his grand plans to create a legacy for himself (the National Capital Medical Center appears to be effectively dead in the water at this time), is trying to slip this endorsement of his plans to replace the MLK library with space for a new, smaller library in a mixed use building at the old Convention Center site through with as little attention as possible. And Councilmember Kathy Patterson, chair of the DC Council committee with oversight over libraries, is accommodating Williams by holding a meeting that is not a Council hearing, during the council's recess, with less than a week's notice and minimal outreach to the public, in order to further minimize public comment on this proposal before the Council votes on the budget early next month.
Hence my request that you take the time to try to stop Mayor Williams from once again selling off public property, the people's property, simply because developers and planners, dreaming of windfall profits at public expense, want to bring the MLK Library, one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in Downtown Washington, under their control, to deface and mutilate as they wish, while our citizens end up with a library in a basement a few blocks away.
If you admire Mies and honor his contributions to American and world architecture, I ask that you speak out against this outrage that is about to perpetrated against the only building of his design in the nation's capital. DC doesn't have a building by Frank Lloyd Wright, has nothing designed by Le Corbusier, but we do have a Mies van der Rohe building. For now.
I hope to see you on Saturday afternoon. But if you cannot attend, at least email, write, or call Councilmember Patterson to express your concerns. She can be reached at kpatterson@dccouncil.us and 202-724-8062.
AlexAlexander M. Padro
Commissioner, ANC 2C01
1519 8th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001-3205
Voice: 202-518-3794
Email: PadroANC2C@aol.com
Website: www.members.aol.com/PadroANC2C
Tonight I'm going (to try) to see a preview of A Bright Room Called Day by Tony Kushner at the Rorschach Theatre. The cost is "pay what you can" for the preview; my thinking is that I'll just pay whatever the ticket price is. But wouldn't it be smart for the theater to make these things "pay what you can after the show"? My bet is that folks might regard it as a dollar referendum on the performance, but in practice would be more generous than they might expect going in. You know how these things go: It's exciting to see new shows, it's Friday night, the weather's nice, the Nats are winning, and even a bad performance usually has some entertaining element. Total flops are, you know, kind of rare. So long as the players are capable and don't have too many last-minute kinks to iron out, I bet the theater would rake it in.
Anyway, I guess it's not really crucial for the theater to bank on preview night, but seeing as how opening night is very much sold out, it's very important that I get some things done so that I can make it to Columbia Heights to stand in line.
UPDATE: Friday night is looking dim. I'm still stuck in a Bright Room Called the Office, while the performance's curtain rises . . . right . . . now. Shoot.
In Inside Putin's Russia, Andrew Jack describes a meeting with a Russian official:
As I prepared to leave Moscow at the end of 2004, I went to the ministry of foreign affairs to receive my annual press accreditation card.So kurators mind the media—that certainly fits the story behind the Whitney Museum's NYT ads."Andrew, why do you keep writing about Yukos? Why not something more positive?" said my kurator, a young shaven-headed man who had recently replaced his end-of-career predecessor as ‘handler’ of the English-speaking media. "That way when I show my boss your articles next year, he will be able to say you are a serious correspondent and offer no objection to renewing your card."
More on the Whitney Biennial very soon—stay tuned.
A thanks and horns-up to fellow Longhorn J.H. for e-mailing the text of the article I mentioned below. It's a 2003 WaPo spotlight by architecture critic Benjamin Forgey on the Mies Van der Rohe Farnsworth House ("one of the most important—and beautiful—creations in the history of 20th-century architecture") on the eve of the building's sale at Sotheby's, an auction that might have imperiled its existence. (Had the Farnsworth House been sold to a private buyer, that buyer could have altered the original design to make it more "livable" or even attempted to take down and move the House to a different spot.)
Forgey wrote that "the Farnsworth House's useful life as a house is perhaps over. The building's public time has come, one hopes, because like all great cultural artifacts, this one belongs to the ages." One might say nearly the opposite about the MLK Memorial Library, the limits of whose public service was never tested, given the library system's gross mismanagement.
Regardless, Forgey suggested that potential buyers consider donating their auction bids to the joint campaign between the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois to buy the Farnsworth. And those are the organizations who own the building now, exactly as it should be.
Here's hoping that we'll yet see Forgey prognosticate about the fate of the District Mies very soon. Full text of the 2003 article (and a pony!) below the cut.
The Washington Post Saturday, October 25, 2003And for dessert (because I know you read every nutritious word) (via):SECTION: Style; C01
HEADLINE: Sheer Treasure: Fate of Mies House Is on the Block
BYLINE: Benjamin Forgey, Washington Post Staff Writer
DATELINE: CHICAGO
They were going to show the Farnsworth House this morning, busing folks 60 miles from the Loop into the Illinois countryside for brunch and "a private viewing" of the famously beautiful -- and exquisitely impractical -- weekend retreat.
But the party was canceled this week, say the real estate marketers, because it wasn't private enough. "Once the invitations were received, the response we got was very, very overwhelming," explains Stuart Siegel, president of Sotheby's International Realty. "People told us they didn't want to see it with a group. 'We know the house,' they were saying, 'and we want to see it at our own pace, in privacy.' "
Oops. You will have to give Siegel a call in New York if you'd like your own private tour of the world's best and best-known glass house at its wooded, 60-acre site in the fast-suburbanizing farmland near Plano, Ill. Be sure of your finances before you call, however. The Farnsworth House is being offered for sale at a Sotheby's auction in New York on Dec. 12 with a pre-sale estimate of $4.5 million to $6 million.
Here's a better idea. If you want to save this great treasure, you can do it for less. A donation of $1 million or so, or indeed of any amount, would boost a last-minute campaign by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois to buy the house.
In announcing the campaign on Oct. 16, the two organizations pledged $1 million each to seed the fund. "We've had some interest, but we're not there yet," reports National Trust President Richard Moe. "We're trying to identify individuals and institutions in the limited universe of those who are passionate about modern architecture."
The cause is just. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1946 and completed in 1951, the Farnsworth House is one of the most important -- and beautiful -- creations in the history of 20th-century architecture. Its cultural worth far outweighs its monetary value or its status as a private residence.
But money is what auctions are all about, so it remains crucial that the two public organizations succeed in their last-minute campaign. They propose not only to preserve the building on its original site, but also to guarantee public access by operating the house as a museum.
Yes, there may be a buyer out there who would treat the house with due respect, but such a result is far from certain. Because there are no restrictions on the Sotheby's sale, a purchaser would be free to alter Mies's masterpiece -- to add a bedroom for the kids, say, or to screen in its airy porch -- and thereby disturb or destroy its subtle harmonies.
Or, a new owner might even decide to take the house apart piece by piece (no simple task given the precision of Mies's detailing) and move it to another location. Moe and David Bahlman, president of the Illinois preservation group, rightly point out in a joint statement that this would be "an architectural disaster of the first order." It also would
be quite loony, but there's no telling what kind of loons might be attracted to Sotheby's in December.This uneasy situation came about because the State of Illinois, under budgetary and political pressure, reneged on an agreement to buy the house from Lord Peter Palumbo, its owner for the past 31 years. Palumbo, a real estate developer and collector of modern houses -- he also possesses a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Pennsylvania and one by Le Corbusier in Paris -- purchased the property in 1972 from Edith Farnsworth, a medical doctor and the original owner.
By all accounts Palumbo has been an ideal custodian, using the house as it was intended to be used -- as an intermittent retreat -- and maintaining it in pristine condition. After a damaging flood of the Fox River in 1996, he hired Chicago architect Dirk Lohan, Mies's grandson, to carry out a $500,000 restoration. On my recent visit the house looked as good as new. The hundreds of lady bugs attracted to its white steel piers did not in the slightest mar the splendid lines.
The Farnsworth House is more about ideas than practicalities. Its everyday deficiencies have been almost legendary from the time they were first enumerated by Farnsworth in an Illinois courthouse in the early 1950s, during a bitter legal dispute with the architect.
For instance, there's the mosquito problem. Mies did not want screens to mar the transparency of his porch or the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, but Farnsworth put them in anyway. One can easily imagine how the screens did indeed taint the beauty, and also how they must have made summer evenings more bearable. (Palumbo, in contrast, has made do without screens and attacked mosquitoes at the source, replacing the prairie grasses they adored with a conventional lawn.)
Then there is the decoration issue -- in Mies's carefully calculated interior, one cannot even move a chair a few inches without altering, and possibly spoiling, the carefully calibrated whole. More fundamentally, there's the contradiction between residential privacy and all-glass walls, made all the worse when the house in question is famous and lacks any interior walls. Farnsworth once was startled coming from her shower by a group of Japanese tourists, busily snapping photographs.
These and other impracticalities, however, pale in comparison to the building's sheer presence in the landscape. And its other transformative qualities. The house is simplicity itself -- a long box measuring 28 feet by 77 feet and constructed of glass and white-painted steel -- yet simple means have been deployed with such definitive precision that the effect is magical and complex.
Supported by eight wide-flange steel columns and raised five feet off the ground, the horizontal box at first view appears to hover amid trees. The slightly asymmetrical placement of a long entry platform contributes to this dynamic effect. Yet, paradoxically, the transparent building stands solidly and authoritatively in the land -- there are
echoes of stone Greek temples in this harmonious box with steel legs.You see right through it, but it refuses to disappear.
The house has a handmade feel, too, despite its industrial materials. During construction Mies insisted that the steel columns be painstakingly sanded and covered with several coats of thick white paint to eliminate any sign of the welds and bolts that connect the column to the steel roof and floor beams. It's as if the architect wanted his house to be as perfect in its way as the gorgeous old sugar maple that shades it from the south.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of architects have gone to school on the building's nonpareil conjoining of outside with inside, man-made with nature. It is in a sense an observatory more than it is a house, a contemplative pavilion in a glade alongside a river. In fact, the Farnsworth House's useful life as a house is perhaps over. The building's public time has come, one hopes, because like all great cultural artifacts, this one belongs to the ages.
I was thrilled to see confirmation that the Yellow Line will be extended to Ft. Totten next year—but why should I be? My landlord told me last night that he's selling the house that I'm renting. He didn't so much tell me as show up unannounced with prospective buyers hoping to take a walkthrough (interrupting ANTM, no less!), but whatever. It's bad news and I have no interest in looking for another place and I already proactively miss my lovely home on V. Now every barbecue will feel like the last.
So, what next? H Street? Trinidad's supposed to be cheap—I guess that's where I'll be looking. I could probably get used to the Argonaut.
Let's get rid of the fuckin penny already!
Tomorrow's CP pick: Connie Imboden at Heineman Myers.
Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, MLK Memorial Library, 1972. Click to enlarge.
Those were the words of the Washington Post's architecture critic, Wolf von Eckardt, in 1972 upon the opening of the Mies Van der Rohe–designed MLK Memorial Library.
We've heard precious little in recent days from the WaPo about the fate of the building, even as it's become increasingly clear that District developers and government officials emphatically do not share von Eckardt's flattering and considered opinion of the building. With last week's announcement that Benjamin Forgey, the WaPo architecture critic since 1981, will retire in June, I don't imagine that the paper has plans to act as an advocate for high architecture or as a local educator on the architectural and civic history of the District's most important Modernist building.*
Months ago readers of the WaPo—Metro section, not Style—were treated to a two-fer by Debbi Wilgorin (here and here ) concerning the library's administrative hurdles and the concomitant fate of the Mies building. On February 6, Wilgorin wrote:
[M]any civic activists and library advocates are reluctant to abandon the existing library named for the civil rights leader, which is a badly neglected but architecturally significant building designed by famed modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.Levy's interest is in moving new property, architectural landmark be damned. Neglecting the stamp of one of the Big Three (Mies, Wright, Le Corbusier) is an architectural crime.A task force Williams appointed last year to study overhauling the library system estimates the cost of building and endowing a new central library at $280 million. The mayor and the library board, which he also appointed, say a top-quality public library would draw people to the new neighborhood. [Note to Mayor Williams et al.: The spot in the "new neighborhood" is located in the heart of gentrified DC . . . just two blocks from the Mies. —ed.] They also say the existing headquarters facility lacks the openness and flexible programming space that are the hallmarks of 21st-century libraries, and that it cannot be renovated and rewired to adequately serve today's patrons.
"Besides being depressing, and aside from all the deferred maintenance, the Mies building is a very inefficient building," said developer Richard Levy, who heads the library board's facilities committee. He said the city would get more value for its libraries by selling or leasing the Mies building as office space and putting the proceeds toward library improvements elsewhere.
It's been a crime long in the making, and one that contributes to Districters' disconnect with the building. Alexander Padro of the Recent Past Preservation Network writes about the effects of decades of neglect on the building:
As a result of the District of Columbia's chronic budgetary woes and spending less than a third of the national average on library building maintenance, the MLK Library has suffered significant neglect. Among the signs of neglect are stained and threadbare carpeting, inoperative drinking fountains, an HVAC system unable to provide consistent temperature throughout the building, long-abandoned dumbwaiter and pneumatic tube stations, and obsolete card catalogs built into the floor of the main lobby. Importantly, while much of the library's valuable Mies-designed furniture has been discarded, the building is virtually unchanged in terms of its appearance and plan since it opened. Three spaces on the fourth floor, the director's office, the board room, and the director's reception room, all of which have multiple pieces of original furniture by the architect, best reflect Mies' design esthetic.Executive spaces, notably, that aren't well traveled by the daily library user. Not that it has to be that way. The DC Preservation League notes that, as one of the most functional buildings the architect ever designed, the MLK Library "was constructed with a flexible interior plan and the capacity to add a fifth story when needed. These measures were taken to ensure the building could continue to serve its intended purpose for approximately 150 years."
Setting aside for a moment the question as to whether the Mies serves the community well as a library—but noting in passing that there is no architect whose building could undergo 30 years of severe decline and still be prized by the community—other questions stand regarding Mayor Williams's business model for the future of the library. Writing in the Intowner in 2003, P.L. Wolff reports that the Mayor's plan vision called for a "smaller main library" in the old convention center—at a cost of $150 million. Since then, the Mayor's estimates for the new library headquarters have nearly doubled to $280 M.
His specific intentions for the Mies are no clearer. Richard Huffine, president of the Federation of Friends of the DC Public Library, writes that the Mayor has convened one public meeting on the Budget Support Act of 2007, which "would allow the current home of the main DC Public Library to be leased to a private entity for 99 years." (That April 11 meeting was not open to public testimony.)
More from the WaPo Metro desk: Minus site acquisition costs, the (most recent) mayoral estimate for the cost of the new library headquarters is $180 M. (Don't ask how this cost jibes with the Mayor's 2003 cost—it doesn't.) The new costs assumes a site acquisition bill of $100 million,* which the Mayor suggests will be offset by the lease of the Mies. While it might be reasonable to assume that a century lease for the property could garner $100 M, the costs to restore, refurbish, and repurpose the building are unclear. Assuming that these costs are minimal, why wouldn't the District pay to preserve the architectural gem in its pocket, thus saving the District at minimum $100 M in site acquisition costs?
If those restoration/refurbishing/repurposing costs are maximal, what assurances does Mayor Williams have that the linchpin sale in his plan is feasible? In other words, if the chips fall the right way for a developer, they could work for the District—more so, since the District already owns the building. If the cost is in fact no good for a developer, the Mies won't be developed. And if the Mies can't make for a decent library, what sort of project space can it provide? Who's going to lease a building that "cannot be renovated and rewired"?
Suspect is the fact that the Mayor has not completed a cost evaluation for restoring the Mies. According to architect Stuart Gosswein (excerpted by urban restoration consultant and blogger Richard Layman—and I apologize for the convoluted quoting, but follow me here):
In a letter dated February 20, 2006, the Committee of 100 asked the city's chief financial officer, Nat Gandhi, to undertake a cost analysis on renovating MLK vs. building a new structure. The letter to Dr. Gandhi was copied to the library task force and all members of the DC Council. There has been no response from Dr. Gandhi to date.I have not read any followup to the question. If the cost evaluation has been performed and I simply don't know about it, as ever, I stand to be corrected. Frankly, isn't this a crucial piece of data—a question that should have been asked before February 2006? Shouldn't the Mies cost be square one (if you'll pardon the light pun)?
The Wlliams administration has provided one concrete estimate, anyway: $450 million, the cost of repairing the District's public library system. At a half-billion dollars to remake the entire system, I'm not convinced that a Modernist building is at the root of the problem. Nor is it apparent that a chi-chi, WiFi-enabled centerpiece library will solve those problems or serve the system's core underserved constituency. And even granting the Mayor's goals, it's not clear that the Mies can't be that building in the first place, at better cost and to the pleasure of architecture fans the world over. Or that a new flagship building won't undergo the same fate as the Mies, if the District doesn't address the substantive structural problems that created the mess in the first place.
The Mayor owes the District a few assurances. One, that he has his numbers straight—and that he's considering all the numbers. Two, that the Mayor doesn't plan to demote the District to the architectural backwaters by compromising the Mies. Third, that there actually is money to fix the baseball stadium library system, and it's not contingent on the sale of a building they've been badmouthing as impossibly retrograde for years. There's finally an opportunity to bend Mayor Williams's ear on Saturday, April 22 at 1:00 pm in the MLK Library, and I plan to put in my two cents—so if you care about the issue, I hope to see you there.
Is there any hope that the District can keep the Mies if the District government sells or leases the building? Can everything yet come up Millhouse? Short of inventing a new public purpose for the old MLK Library (contemporary arts center, anyone?), no. Divesting a public building of its public use, especially in such a rushed and unstudied job as the Mies has been given, is a surefire way to serve developers, not the city's non-federal architectural heritage. If it were extremely profitable to lease/renovate the library (so profitable, it'll practically pay for the new one!), we wouldn't be having this discussion—we'd be renovating the one we have. I'm not convinced that Mayor Williams's conviction that saving the library will be accomplished by abandoning the "depressing" Modernist aesthetic/delapidated building at a very high cost—which will be borne by the lease of the "depressing" Modernist aesthetic/delapidated building—is honest, much less responsible.
No, I expect brief public discussion, more of the financial shell game, followed by bulldozers and then a hotel.
One more link: read Leonard Minsky, who's written a great deal on the subject and advocated specifically for the public library system. Books—check 'em out!
* Ben Forgey's written about a Mies preservation project before, just not (to my knowledge) our Mies. A link to the article by Forgey about the Farnsworth house can be found on the sidebar to the right at this National Trust for Historic Preservation site—but the link to the WaPo article no long works. If any reader has a Lexis Nexis account or can otherwise find the original article, and would like to pass it on to me, I'd appreciate it.
** The cost of the Mies was $18 M (which adjusts to around $40 M; I'm pretty sure the reported $18 M is not adjusted for inflation). Unlike the current MLK Library, the proposed library site will not be a standalone building. What will we be getting for $100 M? This question is nearly moot in my mind, since you're not going to do better than a Mies.
UPDATE: Another Gay Republican (yes, another one) writes along the same lines. See you on Saturday, AGR.
UPDATE II: So Benjamin Forgey is still filing reports at WaPo—here's an article about the neighborhood politics surrounding the expansion of the Phillips Collection. I'd assumed that he just wasn't writing for the paper any longer. No one is better suited than Forgey to report on the issue, and no one is more obliged to do so.
Just arrived in New York and I have to report my surprise that the bus didn't stop right at PaceWildenstein for the Tara Donovan show. Maybe if I'd taken the train. I assume I'll have to prove I've seen it before I'm allowed to leave Manhattan. And I'm completely mystified by the "We ♥ You Isaiah" stickers all around Madison Square Garden—whoever put those up is begging for a riot.
Notes from the Frick, the Whitney, MoMA, and Chelsea upcoming.
Sorry that I've turned this space into a City Paper update blog—I have a lot of shows I'd like to write about here but not nearly enough time to get down to it. For now, how about . . . a City Paper update? In today's edition look for an item about "Micro-Monumental" at the Gallery at Flashpoint. I'll link the pick once it appears online tomorrow.
UPDATE: Click.
I usually leave the basketblogging to my capable roommate, but there's room for more observation at the crucial junction of roundball and literature. Courtesy of newest New Critter Nick Desai, here's Dwyane Wade on the classics:
I've read Pride and Prejudice a couple of times. It's one of my favorite books, which usually surprises people. I guess they wonder how a love story from Regency England could be relevant to a 21st century basketball player from the Southside of Chicago. Class struggle, overcoming stereotypes and humble beginnings, getting out of your own way and letting love take over: these are things I can relate to, definitely. Reading the Classics is like opening a door to a world that at first looks so different from mine, but when I look closer, is filled with people who struggle with the same things I do. And the great thing is, they may be a little farther along in their struggle than I am, so I can actually learn something.Providing that Wade does not describe himself to others as "a 21st century basketball player," it seems that his press agent—whoever wrote this boilerplate—has done him some disservice, no? Namedropping Prince Regent's England, only to recognize that basketball players—black kids from Chicago, really—don't talk like that? It could be that I'm just touchy and cynical after Vince Young was judged too dumb for football.*
Nevertheless young Wade should share his library with his teammates. Is Shaq not the very picture of Lord Byron's Childe Harold?
Yet oft-times in his maddest mirthful moodAnd so Shaq won't rest until he gets his ring without Kobe Bryant. Maybe it's a stretch to say that moving to Miami to play for the Heat parallels CH's restless travels across wide lands. And in certain respects Kobe makes the better Byronic hero—his vices are more notorious, anyway. The real question here is to what extent Wade's reading preferences illuminate the differences between Pat Riley and Phil Jackson's approaches to coaching.
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold's brow,
As if the memory of some deadly feud
Or disappointed passion lurk'd below:
But this none knew, nor haply car'd to know;
For his was not that open, artless soul
That feels relief by bidding sorrow flow,
Nor sought he friend to counsel or condole,
Whate'er his grief mote be, which he could not control. (from Canto I)
* And by that I mean that the Wonderlic is incapable of quantifying Young. Design a test that measures clutch Rose Bowl performance, then come talk to him. I haven't forgotten, I ♥ VY.
. . . about an item in the CP on Ruth Levine at Gallery 10 Ltd. It's on page 97, so I'll wait until you get there. This was my first trip to the gallery, which apparently predates the migration of Asian land mammals across the Bering land bridge into North America. A gallery more than 30 years old doesn't "close" at the end of its life, it sets sail from the Grey Havens to the Undying Lands in the West. (Not to say that Gallery 10 is closing; I'm sure the gallerists have much work to do yet in Middle Earth. I don't know what I'm talking about.)
In other news, if you are an artist, I don't want to be friends, because our friendship will introduce a conflict of interest should your work come up in a show I might review. At the same time, I like friends! So I don't know what's going on with that.
Next week I ought to have a couple more items in the CP, and mebbe news about another project, too.
The National Geographic Society announced today the authentication of a recently discovered apocryphal text: the Gospel of Judas. It's a Coptic copy dating from AD 300 of the Greek original, which would have been compiled a century beforehand by the same Gnostics who brought you the accounts of Philip, Thomas, and Mary Magdalene. In it, Judas tells his side of the story:
The most revealing passages in the Judas manuscript begins, "The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week, three days before he celebrated Passover."Greatly looking forward to the wave of supernatural whodunnits that this news will no doubt inspire. When can we read the translation?The account goes on to relate that Jesus refers to the other disciples, telling Judas "you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." By that, scholars familiar with Gnostic thinking said, Jesus meant that by helping him get rid of his physical flesh, Judas will act to liberate the true spiritual self or divine being within Jesus.
Unlike the accounts in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the anonymous author of the Gospel of Judas believed that Judas Iscariot alone among the 12 disciples understood the meaning of Jesus' teachings and acceded to his will. In the diversity of early Christian thought, a group known as Gnostics believed in a secret knowledge of how people could escape the prisons of their material bodies and return to the spiritual realm from which they came.
If Trader Joe's opens a location at 14th and V Streets NW, I'll never step foot into Whole Paycheck again. Let's make this happen. Please, please, please.
More highly concentrated funny than I would have thought could be extracted from the entire state of Kansas. Courtesy of FtF.
I understand that MFA shows mean true stress for artists, which is unfortunate—they're so much fun for me! Here's a quick sketch of the MFA viewing season:
According to the GWU site, Twilley's is the program's only MFA exhibition. Is that right? If so, why just one night?
April 7–16: Manna! MICA's Web site is stacked—check out all that glorious information. Their first round of graduate show has already closed, but the second round of MFA theses opens on April 7. Click on the link for names, descriptions, and bios. It's as if all the participants were humans and not mere graduate students!
Everyone but MICA and maybe GWU needs to report to the dean's office. Your graduate sites aren't getting the job done.
Front-page story on IMs in today's WaPo: "Status Icons Show Who's Where When." Will the Internets never cease to amaze? Is this the singularity??
Charles Kuffner has the rundown on seemingly limitless line of politicians vying for DeLay's seat. But according to TPM Muckraker, Tom DeLay can't quit the election without effectively forfeiting his seat for the GOP. He's already won the primary for his district in Texas, and it would take disqualification to start another primary. In order to be disqualified, "he must die, be convicted of a felony, or move out of the state." Great that the DQ mechanism is organized by order of preference.
But DeLay wants to beat the clock. He's moving! Throw them horns up, Texas! Of course, he's moving to Virginia—setting up shop with The Family, I presume—which brings the darkness that much closer to home. But I don't care if he camps out at in the Nats dugout, so long as he's not working in Texas.
You know why Tom DeLay (R-Hell) is resigning now? Besides the fact that he's looking at some F2F with a federal prosecutor, and the GOP needs that photo-op like Scalia needs to be more assertive about his feelings? Because campaign funds DeLay doesn't spend on his campaign can (in fact, must) be spent on his legal fees. Which will probably amout to some hefty coin.
UPDATE: Wait, I'm not making sense. If DeLay can convert his campaign funds into legal defense, he'd want to keep campaigning—with a shoestring operation—right? Just on a shoestring operation. After all, his continued arrogance inspires a stiffer upper lip among the true believers than his resigning. Maybe his resignation allows DeLay to give up the pretense and focus full-time on playing the martyr (i.e., pushing the defense fund that has been operating parallel to his campaign purse). I think the prevailing theory holds: DeLay sees the writing on the wall. And it reads like hashmarks, scores and scores of 'em.
Roman bust of an Amazon, circa A.D. 60?, discovered near Herculaneum's Basilica.
Preserved by the same molten rock that buried Pompeii, this recently discovered bust is still wearing her make-up.
