I know, art-lings. You’re anxiously awaiting my report/photo essay on the City Planning Commission testimony by Lowry, Nouvel and other proponents of Jean‘s Beanstalk, the 85-story sliver that developer Hines wants to plant on a small plot adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art.
But first, let’s round out our airing of the opponents’ views. Below is a video now posted on the new website of the tenacious NIMBYs of W. 54th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues) and its environs—Say No to MoMA’s Empire State-Sized Tower. This 6-minute grenade was lobbed by the Coalition for Responsible Midtown Development, an affiliate of the 54-55th Street Block Association.
Some block! It boasts a number of sophisticated, well-heeled residents who collaborated on the clip. The producer is one of their own—artist Justin Peyser. Needless to say, the proponents of the project dispute the residents’ assertions. [More on that later.]
In addition to their misgivings about the MoMA Monster, I agree with the critics’ distaste for the north side of the Taniguchi design for the museum’s most recent expansion—what I had called (in my 2006 critique) “The 54th Street Prison Wall.”
Three years ago, I commented (#7 on my list of gripes):
I was at the City Planning Commission deliberations where they [the commissioners] said
they wanted some “transparency” from the [sculpture] garden to the street. Instead,
it’s “Keep Out.”
At this writing, the City Planning Commission is expected to vote on the Hines/MoMA project at its Sept. 9 meeting. (There may be further discussion before that, at one or more of the commission’s review sessions.) If it’s thumbs up, the tower looms over the City Council, where a vote is likely to occur in November.
And then…?