Gothamist enhancerGothamist beat me to the punch this morning (as they do whenever I intend to write something NY-centric) with a link-filled post on the reopening of the front entrance of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
As it happens, I live around the corner from the Brooklyn Museum and will be there for some of the weekend’s scheduled activities and looking for Francis and Rose. (Beyond a simple hello, my mother has recently gotten into knitting, so I have some questions for Rose).
I have been watching the building in progress since I moved to the neighborhood last June, my view of the grand columns and classic design marred by construction fencing and cranes. I never took the time to examine the
plan for the building, so when I saw the entrance addition in progress, it looked to me like a frame. It turns out, though, that what I thought was a step along the way is the intended design - and now the finished product. I’m not impressed.
The new entrance doesn’t fit at all with the preexisting architecture of the building. It is like a tour of the architectural oddities of my education: from the fishbowl at Cornell’s Uris Library overlooking Libe Slope (which I like) to the Jerome Greene Hall extension at Columbia Law School (which nobody likes).
Uris Library uses the slope of the hill to create a sunlit reading room with a great view of West Campus. It is also open to passers-by and was known for years as a prime spot for the see-and-be-seen set. Now that “facetimer” is more a slur than compliment, it is a charming quirk to be visible to the people walking by on the hill. In its place, the curved glass is integrated into the building and it just ... works.
Greene, on the other hand, with East Campus in the background, looks like a toaster dropped into an aquarium. The green glass is jarring; the horizontal slats unappealing. It wasn’t much to look at before, but is just sad now. You can see the evolution here. ‘Bellerophon Taming Pegasus’ remains a cool statue, though.
The Brooklyn Museum entrance strips the Uris fishbowl out of context and slaps on the slats and green glass of Jerome Greene to bad effect. It compounds the error by affixing it to the front of a building with a classic look. I look forward to a view of the museum without construction equipment, but the entrance itself is going to take some getting used to.
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