Tyler Green writes in Portfolio that Christie's will try its hand at selling at auction Richard Neutra's 1946 Kaufmann House. Sometimes called the Kaufmann Desert House, the modest Modernist resort in Palm Springs, California, was restored in the 1990s to its original design. A detail from Green's article:
Crosby Doe, a Los Angeles-based real estate agent who specializes in properties by prominent architects, says that the market for California midcentury Modern architects such as John Lautner, Pierre Koenig, R.M. Schindler, and Neutra is booming. "I liken it to the stock market," says Doe. "When the real estate market is bad, these are the blue chips that people still go out and buy."Sounds a lot like what people say about the art market, too.
Novel or not, architecture's entry into the high-water mark world of arts and luxuries auctions should steer emphasis toward provenance and original designs. No additions by Barry Manilow after the original owner leaves. This is a good sign for architecture preservationists.
Last month in the Washington Business Journal, Erin Killian and Melissa Castro reported that District Councilman Jack Evans decided to drop legislation exempting churches from historic designations—a dead giveaway to the Third Church of Christ, Science, whose building at 900 16th St. NW is the subject of some controversy. (Background here and here.) A detail from the WBJ report caught my eye:
The preservation board then designated the church as a historic landmark despite the congregation's opposition. In order to redevelop the land and build a new chapel, the church and ICG Properties are seeking a demolition permit, which is scheduled for a March 27 hearing before the preservation board.Why should Dupont Circle residents care? The building is two blocks from the White House, nearly a mile from Dupont. I seem to recall the same residents raising a stink when it was announced that a high-rise would be built at 14th and U Streets NW—which is also not Dupont Circle.A number of Dupont Circle residents are also in favor of tearing down the church, Evans said.
Rem Koolhauas intends to build the Death Star in Abu Dhabi Dubai.
Elsewhere Kyle MacMillan in the Denver Post has the design for the new Clyfford Still Museum, a brick of a building by Brad Cloepfil.
The Washingtonian catches up with former Washington Post architecture critic Ben Forgey, who has some old-hand observations on the city's more famous buildings as well as less obvious spots like Rosslyn and Silver Spring. Click-click.
Photo by rodeomilano.
In The American Spectator, Charles Paul Freund takes up the cause of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, writing that preservationists are pressing too far for the Brutalist church:
Whether an appeal to expertise in Brutalism trumps philistinism, along with property rights, spirituality, and the church's own sense of its religious mission (and thus the First Amendment) remains open both to debate and to legal action.By the sound of it, the Historic Preservation Review Board violated every enumeration of the Bill of Rights except the Third Amendment—which only means that they haven't made the Christian Scientists quarter troops yet.
The Spectator deems blood and treasure central to the defense of the church. Freund writes:
Federal law protects churches from local preservationist enthusiasms. Many congregations are cash poor, and are often housed in old buildings that may be appealing and arguably historic, but which they cannot afford to maintain. Forcing such congregations into a preservationist box may, as one lawyer told the Post, inhibit the congregation's religious expression.Is this the case at the Third Church of Christ, Scientist? Is Christian Science strapped for cash? The article doesn't say. Or rather, the report won't commit to the implied suggestion that the church's small draw (its congregation numbers 40–60 members) owes to a repugnant temple. (Is fifty so surprisingly small a number for a Christian Science congregation? One reader suggested that the Brutalist design is most fitting, given the extraordinary violence that Christian Scientists commit against their members (primarily, in the form of child abuse and neglect).)
But that's all beside the point, insofar as preservation is concerned. From the Washington Post's report:
Tersh Boasberg, preservation board's chair, said during the hearing that the board would not address First Amendment issues in its assessment of the church's architecture.Rightly so. Were the Historic Preservation Review Board to consider the "property rights, spirituality, and the church's own sense of its religious mission"—in this case or in any other case—the sensible conclusion would be that an organization's situation would almost certainly change at some point, and therefore, preservation would never be warranted. It is hardly palatable, especially from a libertarian perspective, for a public group to go about telling organizations that they can't cast off their architectural albatrosses, all in the name of "local preservationist enthusiasms". Nevertheless, the price of architectural continuity is some degree of rigidity that must inevitably be borne by the people who inhabit the buildings.Instead, he said, the board would base its ruling on whether the church's architecture is historically significant.
Given that groups like the Becket Fund exist to protect the flexibility of religious organizations, it is fitting—it is balancing—that the Historic Preservation Review Board considers architecture and architecture alone in making its decisions. Its judgment is not always right—but the suggestion that its conclusions are ill motivated does not hold up in this case.
UPDATE: According to a reader with ties to the church, the national Christian Science organization is in fact in dire financial straits.
I. M. Pei, Third Church of Christ Scientist, 1971.
The same Washington Post editorial I slammed below clues me in to the fact that parishioners at the Third Church of Christ Scientist want to raze their I. M. Pei–designed building:
A few blocks west, at 16th and I Streets NW, stands the exposed concrete of the octagonal Christian Science church. Also erected in the early 1970s, it was designed by I.M. Pei & Partners at a time when Pei's firm also was designing several other complexes for the church. The abstractly sculpted mass at the corner of the block adjoins a high, featureless concrete wall extending north to an eight-story office building. The concrete sanctuary, wall and office building constitute an ensemble framing a plaza facing 16th Street.How's this béton brut beauty supposed to function as a civic space? It's a temple for a small congregation built near an adjoining Christian Science office building. That they'd like to sell the plot to developers, I 'll believe. What exactly would that do to "bring life" to 16th and Eye?The D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board is considering historic landmark designation for the church, contrary to the wishes of many church members, who, according to press reports, dislike the building and its architectural brutality. It's too big for the shrinking congregation, which would like to demolish the building to make way for a smaller sanctuary and to redevelop this prime site, especially because the lifeless plaza has never succeeded as a civic space.
If possible, Lewis's suggestion for Pei's piece is worse than his idea about the Mies. There's nothing to the building if you can't see its shape, of course.
The Washington Examiner reports that the Fenty administration is talking to the Bloomingdale's corporation about potentially locating a new store in the Mies Van der Rohe–designed Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. If the Examiner's report is true, it suggests that the Fenty administration is no more serious about the fate of the library than the Williams administration. Less so, even.
Mayor Williams, at the very least, had identified a site for the library to be re-placed. Even if the Williams plan for the Old Convention Center (to be developed by Hines International and Archstone-Smith, and approved at one time by the City Council) only allocated 110,000 square feet for "civic use"—roughly one quarter of the area of the 400,000-square-foot Mies-designed library—it was, to be sure, a space.
Given that the proposed new library was intended to be a token aspect of an essentially commercial development at the Old Convention Center site, I find it far more credible that talks between Bloomingale's and the Fenty administration have focused on and will continue to focus on the prospect of the Old Convention Center site itself. Why would Bloomingdale's want to court negative press associated with replacing the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library—whose eviction from the Mies building has not (to date) drawn sufficient support from the community, despite aggressive promotion by Mayor Williams and significant developer interest? Why would Bloomingdale's want to take on the cost of renovation for the Mies facility when it could build a new store in a commercial center a few blocks away? Why also would Mayor Fenty choose to stake out a plan to draw a new Bloomingdale's into the city rather than to build a new library for the city (or whatever he perceives to be the solution to whatever he perceives to be the problem with the old library)? And if the whole problem is that the Mies building is so offensively ugly and unmanageable, what's Bloomingdale's see in it?
Complicating matters further, the MLK Library was granted Landmark status by the Historic Preservation Review Board this year. The Historic Landmark and Historic District Preservation Act of 1978 safeguards landmark sites against alterations, including any "change in any interior space which has been specifically designated as an historic landmark". Landmark status protects modern designs from terrible "solutions" intended for changing tastes—like, for example, University of Maryland architecture professor Roger Lewis's proposal in the Washington Post last month. (Building something on top (!) of the Mies is supposed to accomplish what, now?) Makeup counters along the long, uninterrupted planes of Mies's lobby might not technically count as "alterations"—but proposed changes to the building have typically involved keeping the "shell" and gutting the insides.
That's not an option, now. Does Bloomingdale's realize this? I see every incentive for everyone involved to leave the Mies be and look toward the Old Convention Center site.
Owen Hatherly of Nasty, Brutalist, and Short:
Isn't there something truly avant-garde about the lunatic model of heritage held by the Moscow authorities? Building whole series of extra stories atop 17th century villas, 'finishing' a ruined 18th century castle, putting billboards of historical buildings over their soon-to-be-demolished ruins, treating the whole city as totally mutable and extendible: isn't this the dreams of the indeterminates and metabolists finally fulfilled by the revivalists? [sic]It is indeed awesome that one politician, Yuri Luzhkov, under the banner of "restoration," has made Moscow his personal palimpsest.
The comprehensive Moscow Architecture Preservation Society/SAVE European Heritage report published last month hasn't yet been released stateside. (I suppose it is an "over there" sort of report.) But I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy. I find that the Narkomfin and Melnikov House receive a lot of press over here and in the West generally (to wit), in part because those buildings fit a familiar narrative: The public dislikes them or doesn't understand them, but a scrappy band of tweedy underdogs hopes to convince them—and the city—that they're worth saving.
Except, in Moscow, that's not what's actually happening. It's Narkomfin, but also Detsky Mir. It's Melnikov House, but also St. Basil's Cathedral. Moscow's architectural crisis is many pronged. Age, decades of Soviet disrepair, greed and corruption, the incredible influence of oil and development, and incompetence and just-plain sloppiness conspire to snuff out inconvenient buildings and imperil cherished monuments. And, yeah, in the sense that this is a comprehensive crisis owing to administrative permissiveness rather than any systematic or ideological program, it is the novel crisis that Hatherly suggests.
Architectural preservationists and the Sarasota County School District have struck an agreement over the fate of Riverview High School, an important work by Brutalist architect Paul Rudolph. The school board wants to raze Rudolph's deteriorated (and overcrowded) béton brut buildings, important examples of regional modernism—specifically the Sarasota school—in order to build a parking lot. Opposed are those who would prefer to walk, damnit. Kidding—opposed are those who hope to preserve, rehabilitate, and potentially repurpose Rudolph's campus and find another place for students to park.
The agreement gives preservationists one year to raise $20 million to fund an elevated athletic field (a soccer field and tennis courts) with parking underneath. I don't know the ins and outs of this and can't say how likely that is, but one detail from the (prior linked) article irks me. It's a quote from Bob Early, associate superintendent and chief financial and business officer for the Sarasota School District:
[H]e does not have "a spreadsheet that shows two columns: what it would cost to renovate and what it would cost to rebuild," he said. "Our sense is that we can't renovate the building."Why? Why doesn't he have that spreadsheet?
. . . Richard Rogers. It was news to me that he didn't have a few of these puppies on the mantle already.
Richard Rogers, Lloyd's of London, 1986.
Another architectural head on the chopping block: this time, Paul Rudolph's. The NYT:
A plan to demolish a 1960 office tower by the influential architect Paul Rudolph threatens to pit a prominent developer backed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino against preservationists who see the building as a seminal example of midcentury Modernism.Richard Lacayo writes that the developers want to demolish the Rudolph to make room for a public plaza to be built under the Piano building, but catches Piano saying in the NYTthat the developers are pressuring him to widen the building's footprint. Now that's brutal: it's not just a half-cocked bait-and-switch to make way for a massive skyscraper, it's a massive skyscraper that the architect doesn't want to build.If the developer, Steve Belkin, prevails, Mr. Rudolph's 13-story structure will be supplanted by an 80-story skyscraper designed by one of today's biggest names, the Italian architect Renzo Piano.
[ . . . ]
Several groups, including Docomomo, an international organization devoted to preserving Modernist buildings, plan to submit statements at the hearing urging the commission to recommend that the city delay issuing the permit by 90 days.
Mayor Thomas Menino seems to have some crazy ideas about the city. His request for proposals for a design for a 1,000-foot downtown tower prompted exactly one entry. That's a humble response to a major architectural RFP in a world-class city—don't you think?—and the developer and the architect don't seem to see eye to eye on the project. Yet this is pretense for tearing down an existing architectural landmark. Does this design improve Boston's skyline?
Then there's Mayor Nazarbayev's plan to sell City Hall and move the city's business from downtown, where civic and business leaders and citizens congregate (that's what makes it downtown), to the waterfront—property that just absolutely could not be developed otherwise, I'm sure. No one wants anywhere near that Institute of Contemporary Art.
The mayor says the next City Hall building will be a piece on par with the Sydney Opera House. Maybe so, but . . . well, why?
Now, Boston City Hall is not a beloved building by any stretch of the imagination.* Walt Lockley says there aren't enough Red Sox fans in the city to swing it down with sledgehammers. (Agreed, Bandwagon Nation is for wusses.) For what it's worth, the AIA has called it the sixth-greatest building in American history. I don't know about that; and from what I recall City Hall Plaza really is as terrible as everyone says it is—an astonishing failure. But the city risks revising too much of its history, sweeping away the bad old days as if they never happened, by replacing City Hall. "New Boston" is built into City Hall, an historical monument, set in concrete. Energy problems be damned, I'll continue to admire it from a safe distance.
Gerhard M. Kallmann, Noel M. McKinnell, and Edward F. Knowles, City Hall. Boston: 1968. Click for interior.
Cities that bear witness to architectural contiguities—to their unfolding physical history—are fortunate. Take Chicago: It's not a great city because they host the world's last best cursed baseball team, or because they try to sell you on the concept of hot dogs with all the toppings on at once. It's the skyline, stupid—bejeweled by so many Modernist gems, as if the Chicago River has washed them ashore like so much magic silt. Magic silt, that solidified into architectural gems. You may never do anything so cheezy as take the Chicago architectural boat tour (thanks, C!), but having done so helps me to understood why, exactly, Chicagoans aren't happy about the Chicago Spire, much less the incoming Trump Tower. (Why? Why, you ask? Sarah B., Chicago correspondent, explains it all in comments.)
So Docomomo pegs it (in the NYT piece): a Rudolph would sit well next to a Piano. It tells us something about Boston's growth but also about architectural progress. Piano's organic, pluralistic style traces back naturally to Miesian rationalism. The city might well need a plaza, but the Rudolph is too high a price to pay.
* Two first reactions on seeing Boston's City Hall when it was unveiled in 1968.
Critic Ada Louise Huxtable: "What has been gained is a notable achievement in the creation and control of urban space, and in the uses of monumentality and humanity in the best pattern of great city building. Old and New Boston are joined through an act of urban design that relates directly to the quality of the city and its life."
Then-mayor John Collins: "What the hell is that?"
Tyler Green wants to compare bloggers' favorite architectural spaces to the list that AIA compiled by polling everyday Americans (always a senseless thing to do). The AIA top 150 includes such cornerstone examples of architecture as . . . the University of Texas's Battle Hall. I took a class there and remember as little about the subject as I do about the building. I assume Battle Hall eeked by (it's number 150 on the list, beating out this place, for example) after some rabid Longhorn forum confused the lever for Battle Hall:Best Buildings with Vince Young:Rookie of the Year.
On to five great American buildings! Number one: The University of Texas's Blanton Fine Arts Museum by Herzog and de Meuron. Right, right—that building never happened.
Five: World Trade Center (Minoru Yamasaki). It's hard to make sense of the Twin Towers now that they're gone: what they meant and how they worked as architecture. It seems strange to discuss them in terms of repetition and redundancy now. The Towers were a unique monument to empire, affluence, and bragadocious industry. There's nothing else in this weight class.
Four: Chapel on Thanks-Giving Square (Philip Johnson). Texas has better architecture than the state is given credit for, and the state's good architecture does more work than buildings do anywhere else in the nation. In Dallas, I. M. Pei's Fountain Place struggles under the shadow of Reunion Tower, a giant microphone that broadcasts schlockiness, which the city has in abundance.
When you're in Dallas, you don't look to the skyline, you look under it: Tucked away under the hodgepodge of Pomo and Gothic Revival buildings is Johnson's Chapel. There's no better contrast to the hairspray and swagger that make up a sort of ozone that permeates Dallas. And yet it's uniquely Texan. (See also: Rothko Chapel by Johnson in Houston.)
Three: Chrysler Building (William Van Alen). No amount of bad Deco or Deco Echo or future retro revivals could make me think any less of the Chrysler Building, the greatest building in New York and a quintessentially American structure.
Two: St. Louis Arch (Eero Saarinen). The only time I ever spent in St. Louis was driving through. But I told the person with me at the time that I loved this city, if only for the Arch. Any people that put up a monument to space and boundless optimism can't be all bad. (See also: Dulles Airport by Saarinen.)
One: 330 North Wabash (Mies Van der Rohe). 330 North Wabash (nee IBM Plaza) is the building that comes to mind when I think of the great American contribution to architecture: the skyscraper. Monadnock was Chicago's protoskyscraper, a gilled thing that crawled out of the primordial groundfloor, clawing its way toward air. 330 North Wabash is product of that evolution, the endpoint of all that progress—an uberbuilding. (See also: Seagram Building by Johnson and Mies.)
Gelato-lovin' Blake Gopnik is not the man I'd turn to for notes on breakfast dives (brunch, maybe). But he does right by the Waffle Shop, a downtown diner and an example of American Moderne design that's well preserved and, more impressively yet, still functioning. The Waffle Shop is exactly the sort of historic vernacular architecture that a city needs to fight to keep, lest the perpetual nip and tuck of industry eventually make that city over into a Dallas, Texas.
And the critic has his place in championing significant works: putting architecture in the public eye, clarifying its context, and suggesting ways to preserve a visual legacy without hampering the city or its business. Doing his part for architectural activism, Gopnik writes:
Though the restaurant has been allowed to go a bit to seed -- there's dirt everywhere, the ceiling is a mess, and the facade's original plate glass is patched and seamed -- its great bones survive unchanged. With not much more than a splash of paint, some elbow grease and a modestly tweaked menu, one of the city's more artistic restaurateurs could restore the Waffle Shop to its former glory.Okay, so he wants to turn it into a brunch spot. Fair enough. He writes that the store only lacks for exposure—the Moderne style sells itself, after all.
No doubt, the Waffle Shop deserves the advocacy. But c'mon—it's softball. Gopik should be swinging for the Mies-designed MLK Library, a real knuckleball of an advocacy project. It's not only the most significant modern building in the city—erected by one of the most distinguished architects of the 20th century—it's a highly politicized building, one whose fate hung more than once on a single vote during the District's 2006 legislative session. Getting into the thick of it is just good journalism. The excellent opinion piece by outgoing architecture critic Ben Forgey notwithstanding, there hasn't been much of that out of the WaPo on the library.
And furthermore, the Mies case involves tricky, inside baseball. Library supporters seem like jerks when they oppose compromises like painting the exterior, altering the floorplate, and draping the windows. But a critical backgrounder from the paper of record could establish in the debate that ornament is crime (or so they used to say): even superficial tweaks add up to a thorough repudiation of the design. Or that none of the compromises address the city's stated problems, unless the city really means to say that the library's fugly. And a backgrounder with a little teeth might address head on the fact that people who complain about the Mies, complain about the homeless people at the Mies and the books that it doesn't have.
Mies Van der Rohe, MLK Memorial Library, a great while back. Photo courtesy Rob Goodspeed.
Forgey rattled off those points and, most importantly, declared that the building is totally beautiful. And it is: severe, stately, handsome. It should be said every time a city bureaucrat complains that it's ugly, since that debate is neither here nor there.
Gopnik's the guy who bats cleanup in this town, critically speaking. Right now, the city doesn't have a plan for the building. It's a good time for a critic to outline a progressive, rather than a defensive, agenda. So, what would Gopnik do?
WaPo:
In its last item of business yesterday, the D.C. Council rejected a frantic attempt to move forward with the construction of a $275 million downtown central library, which has been seen as Williams's legacy to the city.But what is a "discharge"? For what kinds of unhygienic acts is this maneuver usually reserved?The Council Committee on Education, Libraries and Recreation voted 3 to 2 last month to keep the legislation in committee for more study. Opposing council members said they had questions about the cost of the project and whether the flagship Martin Luther King Jr. Library could be renovated.
But Patterson, who is the committee chairman and a library supporter, tried to force the legislation onto the agenda, a rarely used maneuver known as a "discharge."
Fenty, who is the Ward 4 council member and a library supporter, said the city had exhausted numerous studies and public hearings to conclude that it needs a new downtown library. He said Williams's plan was a "good jumpstart" for improving the library system as a whole.
But some opposing council members described the city's neighborhood libraries as "shameful" and "disgraceful" while questioning why the city would pour millions of dollars into a new central library when other libraries are closed or in disrepair.
Brown said residents go to the MLK library because it is in better shape than the facilities in their communities. "I can no longer sit here and listen to this foolishness," he said.
Patterson had the support of seven council members, but library ally Sharon Ambrose (D-Ward 6) had to leave the council session early because of illness. Library supporters offered to send a car to get Ambrose, but they said she was too sick to return for the vote.
The effort failed in a 6 to 6 vote.
I'm willing to buy that Williams's plan is a good one to "jumpstart" the city, insofar as he's released a 370-page blue ribbon taskforce report that the community has had little time to digest. There are other considerations that were never discussed—in particular, the city's official cost estimate and plan for renovating the MLK Library—and those should come next.
I haven't blogged about every one of Mayor Williams's herky-jerky moves to push forward the library legislation, but suffice it to say that today's rumor that sympathetic outgoing Council chair Kathy Patterson is plating an 11th hour library bill—after the last one got tabled—should be no surprise.
Except that I don't think she's able to do this in the way the Friends of the Library describe. I'm pretty sure any bill brought forward at this point can only be considered as emergency legislation. Of course, no one knows how this process works—it was a subject that perplexed everyone after the legislation was tabled. If I recall from a discussion of the Councilmaster's guide (for it has not come into my hands), Patterson will need to tap two mana, convince nine Councilors to vote to consider the bill as emergency legislation, and hope she has the HP to endure the counter in the following move.
DCist picks up the story here. As Sommer notes, the library has 99 problems. And now there's this gaping hole in the OCC footprint to think about. But it's easy to bury the lede in this story: Mayor Williams hoped to slip under the radar an ambitious restructuring of the DCPL. From the beginning his plan has resisted scrutiny, and the press has mostly not bothered. The Mayor released his Blue Ribbon Task Force report on the future of District libraries, a 370-page monster, the day before the Council's scheduled markup session on the legislation. And all this happens the week of Thanksgiving. I mean, come on.
Today Kojo Nnamdi—oh, go ahead, treat yourself, trill his name! You know you can't resist lolling those mellifluous tones over your tongue—will talk with new library chief Ginnie Cooper. Given that NPR just mentioned the tabled library bill in its hourly news roundup, I'm betting the question will come up. (NPR's angle, for what it's worth, was that the caucus found that the OCC site was too profitable to be given over to a public library. That's definitely Carol Schwartz's reasoning for opposing the Mayor's plan, but not Gray's position, that is, not his position before the vote. Now, it's harder to say. Barry's position is, as ever, mysterious. You know, I think I might have even said something like this to NPR's cub reporter.) Just a few more minutes of listening to poor Art Buchwald slowly dying on air on the Diane Rehm show, and then I'll be updating.
Here's the Mayor's response:
It's disappointing that the Education Committee did not approve our library plan but it's a good sign that the members tabled it rather than voting no. That suggests to me that they see the value of a new, clean, high-tech, child-friendly modern central library that is worthy of our great city and want to revisit this issue again soon. I will be redoubling my efforts over the next few weeks to work with Councilmembers to respond to any unanswered questions they have about the project.I understand that yesterday Mayor Williams called Marion Barry three times before the committee vote, so phones will be ringing off the hook—now, he has to convince nine members to introduce the library bill as emergency legislation, if he has any hope of establishing the library transformation as part of his legacy.
Tomorrow, the City Paper's Jessica Gould will run an item on the Hirshhorn's loading dock renovation woes. Woes? Woes.
And cheers & bon voyage to folks departing and joining the paper.
MLK Memorial Library. Picture by Rob GoodspeedSCOOP: Are the Mayor's plans to create a new library on the grounds of the Old Convention Center DOA? That's the story, after the D.C. City Council just voted to table the legislation in committee by a 3–2 vote. Councilmembers Marion Barry, Carol Schwartz, and Vincent Gray caucused before the meeting began, delaying quorum for nearly 20 minutes. After chair Kathy Patterson finally called the session to discuss Bill 16-734 (The Library Transformation Act of 2006), Schwartz immediately motioned to table the legislation. Patterson called for a roll-call vote, and the motion carried: Barry and Grey voted with Schwartz.
So, with the legislative session winding down, any other attempt to pass the legislation during Mayor Williams's tenure will involve introducing emergency legislation. That requires nine votes. Whether he has that many votes in the Council or not, and it's not clear that he does, it probably won't happen: Vincent Gray is the chair next term, and members are likely to defer to his vote on legislation that immediately impacts the next session. And really, for all its woes, the library is hardly the stuff of emergency legislation—unless you're preparing your legacy, that is.
Okay, this is cool.
via.
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.
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
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.
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.
Both [District Mayor Anthony] Williams and the library board want to replace Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, with a facility that would anchor the redevelopment of the old Washington Convention Center site. The task force estimated the cost at $280 million. [emphasis added]Elected officials in this city aren't seriously contemplating destroying the Van der Rohe, are they? That just can't be the case. They must mean to replace the library facility with another facility, located somewhere else, and in no way on the same site where stands one of the District's modern architectural gems.
I'm comfortable with moving the library (they won't let me borrow anyway, damn fines). The Van der Rohe is not being put to the best of its potential uses. It's not a space I'd prefer to be in to read, which is a library function that's taking greater precedence in design today—the library as a Starbucksian communal space—even if bureaucrats only ever talk about it in terms of the Internets. On the other hand, clearly, the building is the city's leading candidate for a dedicated contemporary arts center. As for all those books, isn't there an empty building up the road?
In my last year at Texas I took a fantastic course from Aleksandra Shatskikh, a visiting Malevich scholar. She has an editorial in
