Metropolitan Museum’s “Superheroes” catalogue
Iris You, faithful CultureGrrl reader, has given me an assignment:
I’d love to read your take on Why We Need a Hero at Ground Zero.
That’s a current NY Magazine “Intelligencer” piece, which has nominated a “‘traffic cop’ to coordinate the snarl of public agencies, private
developers, contractors, architects, and consultants on the [World Trade Center] site.”
Who is NY Mag’s hoped-for hero? None other than the caped crusader himself, SuperCount.
Yes, now that the Metropolitan Museum’s director, Philippe de Montebello is about to burst the bonds of bricks, mortar and bottom lines, writer Justin Davidson wants him to venture where no museum director has gone before—the maelstrom of government bureaucracy and real estate interests that have transformed the World Trade Center rebuilding project from sacred trust to disgraceful bust.
Strangely, Davidson failed to mention the one instance when Philippe actually did, very publicly, enter the debate about the future of Ground Zero—his 2001 NY Times Op-Ed piece, The Iconic Power of an Artifact, in which he argued for “preserving and reinstalling” the “huge, skeletal and jagged steel fragment of the World Trade Center and
its facade that still [at that time] stubbornly stands in the midst of the utter
destruction of Ground Zero.”
It was a sculptural statement more powerful than any art that might be commissioned for the site. But it’s been cleared with the rest of the rubble and Philippe’s effort to influence that one small aspect of planning at Ground Zero came to nought.
As for the future work that de Montebello IS eminently well qualified for, his upcoming professorship at NYU (for which he will also be “special advisor for NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus,” according to the press release)—NY Mag published on Apr. 13 a revelatory piece about the university’s plans to build its megabucks Abu Dhabi empire.
COMING TOMORROW: MORE ON ABU NYU