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New York, New York
To see a perfect forest through so many splintered trees
The new normal in Lower Manhattan really doesn’t feel all that normal yet. The World Trade Center site is cleared, one big empty lot, and suddenly you can see straight across to Caesar Pelli’s World Financial Center complex that you could never see before.
As for the site, the above ground construction appears to be all gone, except for the Deutsche Bank Building. They’re clearing out the old below grade concourses, trying to take away pretty much all evidence that the old towers were ever even there.
If every word I ever said was recorded and used against me, I’m sure you’d already know that on the day that the World Trade Center towers fell, one of the darkest days I have ever experienced, I am on the record saying something along the lines of “well, at least that awful globe sculpture is gone.” To spite me, it survived and is on display now in Battery Park, all banged up and, with its scars in clear view, way more interesting than it was before.
The old MoMA, the only one I remember, is closed and being ripped apart as we speak. MoMA can rebuild itself. MoMA has the technology. They can make it better than it was. Better, stronger, faster. Until then, highlights of MoMA’s collection moved out to Queens in a temporary space called, somewhat appropriately, MoMA QNS, because I guess no one really likes all those extra E’s
Inside MoMA QNS is actually quite nice. It’s simple, but has good circulation and is far less pretentious than the old building. The temporary MoMA QNS building was designed by Michael Maltzman, even though if my last name was Maltzman, I would not have become an architect and instead started a bespoke milkshake shop.
Past the lobby, the galleries look like galleries, with iconic pieces of the strongest modern art collection in the world on view.