Contemporary – New York
Jessica Kraft | Contemporary
August in New York, by dint of the late summer heat, brings out the city’s worst qualities. and is thankfully the time when most New Yorkers escape its foul incarnation-many of them migrating in flocks to the fashionable Hamptons. After this exodus, the city scene seems to rise to its hottest, stinkiest and most conservative.
The development of the World Trade Center site continues to dominate local drama. Besides the complete alteration of Daniel Liebeskind’s first design of the building to conform to David Childs’ (of SOM) vision, as well as the over-wrought but necessary security concerns of the New York City police, the cultural centre for the site is now being re-thought. In this era of government surveillance and patriotic avoidance of critique, the non-profit Drawing Center has come under fire from New York Governor Pataki and various 9/11 victim advocacy groups. Having once exhibited Amy Wilson’s artwork depicting a hooded prisoner at Abu Ghraib, the Drawing Center has been singled out for displaying art that may ‘promote terrorism’.
While no one would want to deliberately offend the families of the 9/11 victims, the straight and narrow design of the final architectural proposal coupled with the cultural limitations of the Patriot Act mean that the WTC will not offer any kind of transcendent vision of ‘freedom’, nor will it mitigate much of the damage done to the freedom of cultural institutions over the past four years. The Drawing Center has now backed out of the arrangement, not because they plan to exhibit anything that may be considered offensive, but because of the ill will created by the controversy. The gallery is also wary of the potentially unconstitutional attitude of the cultural decision makers and the assumption that small non-profit art centers, so vital to the success of emerging artists, are not valued unless they conform to the sanctimony of present-day memorials.