Displaying items by tag: glenn d. lowry

Earlier this year, New York’s Museum of Modern Art announced that it would move forward with an expansion project that involved razing the former home of the American Folk Art Museum. The Tod Williams and Billie Tsien-designed building was acquired by MoMA in 2011 after the Folk Art Museum defaulted on more than $30 million in bond debt. The building sits adjacent to MoMA and earned praise for its bold design when it opened in 2001.

Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s director, announced that although the former Folk Art Museum will be demolished, the building’s striking bronze facade will be disassembled and stored. The museum has made no further decisions about what will happen with the facade beyond its preservation. Darcy Miro, the artist who collaborated with Williams and Tsien to design the facade, suggested erecting the bronze panels as a freestanding sculpture at Storm King Art Center, an open-air museum in Mountainville, New York.

MoMA’s expansion is being helmed by the New York-based design studio, Diller Scofidio + Renfro.   

After news spread that New York’s Museum of Modern Art planned to tear down the former home of the American Folk Art Museum on West 53^rd Street in Manhattan, opponents launched a petition asking MoMA officials to reconsider the decision.

The petition was launched by New Haven, CT resident, Robert Bundy, and has accrued over 2,000 signatures. In a letter written to MoMA’s director, Glenn D. Lowry, and the museum’s chief architecture curator, Barry Bergdoll, Bundy asks that MoMA preserve the building rather than raze it, which he claims would be an architectural loss for the city of New York.

The building in debate was designed by notable New York-based architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to house the Folk Art Museum. The project was completed in 2001 but after falling into financial turmoil, the Folk Art Museum decided to sell the building to MoMA and move to a smaller location.

The decision to level the structure, which features a sculptural bronze façade, is part of MoMA’s overarching expansion plans. Officials claim that the former Folk Art Museum building doesn’t mesh well with MoMA’s neighboring sleek, glass façade. The Folk Art building is also set back slightly from MoMA making expansion logistics more complicated.

In Bundy’s letter he writes, “We ask that the Museum of Modern Art reconsider its position and save the former American Folk Art Museum. The destruction of the building will result in MoMA no longer being regarded as a protector and promoter of the arts.” The petition can be found on change.org’s website.