Spotted “Public Art” in Willets Point Renderings

March 12, 2010 at 7:44 pm
filed under research, video
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While doing research for my video about Willets Point and the area’s eminent redevelopment, I noticed some conceptual public art inside one of the renderings. As as way to memorialize 260 closed businesses and  1,711 lost jobs*  – a creative person used an allusion to The Great Gatsby as a placeholder for art that comments on the historical background.

If you look at the sidewalk in the above rendering closely (near the baby stroller), you will see the following caption from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby:

This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; …where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

I suggest the following quote from one of the business owners featured in the Save Willets Point video: “It’s years that we have sacrificed to be able to have this business, and overnight the city wants to take it all away.” Or perhaps this zinger from Robert Moses who is responsible for the Flushing Meadows Park: “I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without moving people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs.”
*source: http://www.nyc.gov/html/oec/downloads/pdf/Willets_Point/FGEIS/15_Solid_Waste_and_Sanitation.pdf