I decided to revisit the Met Breuer today, to view belatedly its well attended, justly praised exhibition of photographer Diane Arbus‘ early works, in which her unsettling genius for detecting the bizarre in the commonplace is already fully evident.
I was also unsettled, for the wrong reasons, by what I saw on other floors—large expanses of underutilized space. The ground floor, as you will see in the CultureGrrl Video, below, is still a construction zone, some five months after the press preview. My peek at the restaurant that was supposed to open there this summer—Estela Breuer—revealed a place in shambles, partly shielded with black plastic:
On the floor above the restaurant, the entry lobby was nearly deserted:
When I asked the restaurant’s press spokesperson when it would be functional, she replied, “Opening is currently slated for later this year—no hard date yet.” It seems the Met is missing out on some expected revenue streams—admission income and restaurant sales—at a time when it could use all the earned income it can get.
At the Met’s press breakfast in May, I asked director Tom Campbell how the Met Breuer was doing. He then said that attendance was “above our original projections,” adding that “about 9-10% of visitors travel between the two” (the Breuer and the Fifth Avenue flagship).
If what I saw today was still “above projections,” the bar must have been set pretty low: