Ground Zero and the Performing Arts

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/arts/music/questions-on-ground-zero-arts-left-unanswered.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130403&_r=0pagew

Hello Everyone and welcome to the Monday edition of the Preservation of Community Assets blog.  I hope you all had a nice weekend and if you notice, I've posted a link to the article we will be discussing today.  Today's topic is a proposed arts center on Ground Zero.  Yes that's right THE GROUND ZERO in New York City.  The site has become a type of sacred site in pantheon of American history.  If you remember a few years ago the outcry over a proposed Islamic community center near the site and controversy it caused.  In a New York Times opinion piece Maureen Dowd rightly pointed out that while an Islamic community center near Ground Zero may not be be appropriate but neither are the off-track-betting parlors.  Now, there are plans for an arts center designed by Southern California based architect Frank Gehry.  Mr. Gehry is the visonary architect behind such cultural landmarks as the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California and the Guggenheim Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain.  Though, the architect remains committed to the project, questions remain.

First, let's get some background information.  The proposed center began its life as part of former New York Governor George Pataki's redevelopment plan for Lower Manhattan.  Four cultural organizations were chosen to anchor the project: the International Freedom Center, the Drawing Center, the Signature Theater, and the Joyce Theater.  Of the four, only the Joyce Theater remains, for now.  In the meantime, the issue of cost remains.  The price tag for this new center has ranged from $450 million to $700 million.  In an effort to control the cost, the plans have been dramatically scaled, especially since the Joyce Theater cannot serve as the sole anchor venue.  Even still, the center's board is concerned about fund raising because it has no idea how much the whole project is going to cost.  How is this possible?  A nonprofit arts organization commit itself to a grand project with real community development potential and not know the cost or even have a solid estimate?  Who does that?http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorial/ground_zero_8uJmwcST1ovDXAVOOUc9M

So now in an article for the arts section of the New York Times, writer Anthony Tommasini raises some basic and important questions: What exactly has Frank Gehry been asked to do?  What is the purpose of this project?  Which institutions, ensembles, or companies will use the venue?  Who will be the artistic director?  These questions have even more resonance since the Joyce Theater will not be the anchor the center.  The Joyce was hoping to be a home for dance performances, the International Dance Theater.  Now it appears that the complex will morph into an multidisciplinary space for theater, music, film, and dance according to Maggie Boepple, the center's president.  The Joyce will have a more modest role.  That doesn't sound too bad.  After all Lincoln Center in New York and the Music Center in Los Angeles are also multidisciplinary spaces.  In this case, it's a euphemism for an arts center that lacks focus and a mission or an art spaces available for rent like a catering hall.  Not very promising.  However, experience has shown that when an arts building is designed to be adaptable to everything, it ends being not good for anything.  That doesn't sound encouraging.

Of course it's easy to say that art, all its forms, is liquid and can adapt to all types of spaces, but here we have a case of form not following function.  This is lesson one in architecture school and something Mr. Gehry has been diligent about during his long and storied career.  Mr. Gehry's greatest triumphs have come by meeting the programmatic needs of the institutions that commissioned his firm such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which opened in 2003.  Here, the architect designed a modern 2,265-seat hall that feels both warm and intimate.  As a side note, the building was designed and built using computational architecture-on a computer.  Recently, the New World Center in Miami, Florida, which opened in 2011, seats 756 concert goers in an airy auditorium.  Outside the hall is a park designed by the Dutch firm West 8, where people can watch video broadcast of concerts projected on a huge side wall.

In contrast, the New World Center cost $154 million with the projected costs of the Ground Zero Arts Center projected to be anybody's guess.  Arts complexes succeed when they are built for and run by institutions with a clear identity.  It's both sad and revealing to watch the plans for the proposed performing arts center at Ground Zero fall apart.  We can play hypotheticals and try to image what would've been had Paul Kellogg, the artistic director of the New York City Opera realized his dream of moving the company to the development site.  Mr. Kellogg was long convinced that the main problem facing the City Opera was its home in Lincoln Center.  The opera company was forced to perform in the New York State Theater (The David H. Koch Theater), an acoustically dull space built for the needs of the New York City Ballet.  It was also difficult for the opera company to assert itself in the shadow of the Metropolitan Opera House.

Mr. Kellogg proposed moving the City Opera, "the people's opera," to Ground Zero, a bold yet to some, a foolish idea.  The midtown Manhattan site had history of being a cultural destination point.  Mr. Kellogg took into account that he would lose some of his uptown subscribers but would gain a new audience from Brooklyn (what's with Brooklyn? It comes up all the time) and New Jersey.  He argued that the complex needed an institution with a proven track record and mission such as the City Opera.  True enough.  The Walt Disney Concert Hall got the L.A. Philharmonic.  He planned to increase the number of productions, schedule more matinees, and bring in other presenters.  However, it became clear that the space could not accommodate a theater big enough to meet the opera company's needs.  What really undermined the plans was the discouraging attitude of the neighborhood organizations and civic officials that the company was too specialized, i.e. elitist.  Please! give me a break.  Elitist?  Here was an opportunity to make use of a performing arts organization in the spirit of community economic development and it gets dismissed as elitist.  I would be even more surprised but this attitude is a typical American approach to the arts.

Over time, the attitudes of government and city officials over what types of arts institutions were appropriate to the site proved to be the undoing of two of the selected organizations.  The International Freedom Center, a museum dedicated to human rights, was jettisoned over fears of it being too controversial.  The Drawing Center was effectively pushed off the site after some of the presentations were criticized as anti-American.  The Signature Theater was interested in moving but the city decided that the needs of the theater would be too expensive and the company built a new home on Theater Row in Clinton and appears to be thriving.

Paul Kellogg retired in 2007 and the City Opera has undergone several crises.  Under its current artistic director, George Steel, the company did move from Lincoln Center in 2011, not to a new home, but became a roving company.  Would things have been different had the City Opera found a permanent home on Ground Zero?  Linda Shelton, the Executive Director of the Joyce Theater still remains committed to the site in whatever form it is.