From the Queens Chronicle:For the first time in the nearly 15 years that Community Board 9 District Manager Mary Ann Carey has been working to conserve the “Civic Virtue” statue outside Borough Hall, Borough President Helen Marshall has said she will set up a meeting about repairing the structure that has fallen into disrepair, Carey said.
...Carey said this week that she was heartened by Marshall promising that she would set up a meeting with the district manager about preserving the statue, which has been badly damaged by the elements, as well as pigeon waste, after being outside for so many years.
Carey said one of her priorities is to find a nonprofit that might be able to take on the restoration fight, or potentially use its own funds to help fund the work. She noted that many residents want to see the piece preserved in part because it is one of the borough’s few public art works.
While others have called the work sexist, an art historian from Stony Brook University has also advocated for its preservation.
“I wouldn’t argue that politicians are wrong, or people are wrong, or stupid because they see this work as sexist in some way,” professor Michele Bogart, who lives in Brooklyn, said in a previous interview with the Queens Chronicle. “I would argue they’re not paying close enough attention to the work. They’re reacting in a knee-jerk way and haven’t bothered to understand the history of it.”
Bogart said the statue could be used to teach students and the general public about the history of the city and the borough, as it was commissioned by the mayor in 1909 and ultimately dedicated in 1922.
“Use the work as a vehicle to educate people on the complexities of art, the representation of male-female relationships, about Queens and the city,” she said.
11 comments:
Marshall is a brainless twit. She has wasted our time and tax dollars all of these last 12 years and has ruined our borough beyond repair. She must go!!
Save Our Statue!
The monument was commissioned to represent the triumph of civic virtue over machine politics.
Queens Borough Hall is the PERFECT place for it.
Actually snake your wrong. But the statue should be saved. What is it made of?
It's the largest marble statue after The David.
"Fat Boy"?
For a moment I thought you meant Evan Stavisky.
Michaelangelo Buonorotti's "David"
is colossal in scale.
Had you seen it, you'd know better.
"Civic Virtue" is a miniature compared to it.
Dearie...
move it outside of "Theater In The Park" where all of Queens' theater queens can admire that glorious manly marble ass.
So Marshall is dumb and Shulman
(like Manes) was, and still is,
crooked!
In fact, most of our borough presidents were corrupt.
Abolish the office completely!
It just eats up tax payers' money.
Beeps represent developers not their constituents.
But if forced to make a choice...
I prefer the crooked to the stupid because crooks sometimes pause to take a nap.
Being dumb is a 24/7/365 job!
“I would argue they’re not paying close enough attention to the work. They’re reacting in a knee-jerk way and haven’t bothered to understand the history of it.”
This guy gets it.
People who come to this country are shocked by the absolute mess and disregard for the arts here.. It is a public statue..Whether you like the sculpture or not people deserve to see it preserved and looking well. Tourists who ride the LIRR must look outside the windows and see filth all along the route. Statues that resemble garbage because people care so little about preserving their history. Don't complain about immigration when you can't preserve what you have. I can hear it now when the statue is torn down or removed and they put in its' place a park or monument representing a foreign culture. Too much of a throwaway, disposable culture here. Resting on its' laurels will expire someday and NY will no longer be the city people want to visit, or return to. A shame. Take pride and preserve what you have folks.
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