Drove by Borough Hall today and noted that the green plywood fencing surrounding the Civic Virtue site was down. The workers were hosing the site with water. I spoke to them and they said that blue boxood and white lilies - the colors of the Queens flag - will be planted in the fountain area. Flower planting to come from somewhere in New Jersey. Will Katz have a ribbon-cutting ceremony very soon?
Check out my post here with today's photos of the renovated site.
All the best,
GtheA"
Glad to hear we're even outsourcing flower planting.
20 comments:
George, do you recall if the fountain spewed water past the soon to be flower bed? If not, they'll almost surely be waterlogged and die if they reactivate it after planting.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS LED TO A STATUE BEING TAKEN DOWN. UNFUCKING BELIEVABLE !! ONLY IN NY !!
You know this will cost at least $500,000 to get this up and running, and when you mention it to the typical local they will get uncomfortable and change the subject and if you have any pictures of Queens Blvd back in the 1940s.
Maybe she wants to pose nude on the pedestal?
There is nothing to celebrate here, Queens suckers. Melinda Katz just spent $920,000 to repurpose Kew Gardens Plaza, instead of spending $200,000 to return the formerly evicted statue, 'Triumph of Civic Virtue,' to its once permanent home bace, as it was gifted to Kew Gardens by former Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
What occurred since Saturday, December 15, 2012, the statue's publicly unauthorized eviction that took place under the cover of darkness, is nothing more than a public massacre and desecration of public art——all because of a sociopath named Helen Marshall and her predecessors, all of whom not only destroyed democracy, but they willfully ignored their public duties to conserve, repair and clean the statue when it was still on public display in Kew Gardens for nearly 71 years. This is what Third World country dictators (and Banana Republics), foist on to their powerless subjects, with impunity!
Meanwhile, following is what Robert LoScalzo, a documentary filmmaker had to say about the sordid debacle involving the eviction of Triumph Of Civic Virtue, as he posted below on Queens Crap, on Thursday, May 5, 2016:
❝As far as what is happening with the Triumph of Civic Virtue statue is concerned, one could never invent a story like this, because it just would not be believable.
City first denied any secret plan to move the colossal statue off of Queens Boulevard. City then implemented its secret plan, and moved statue to a Brooklyn cemetery on the pretext that cemetery would bear certain costs of restoring the statue. Instead, public funds paid to restore the statue——on the premises of the cemetery, where the statue remains now. Meanwhile, City is implementing separate plan to renovate the statue's fountain base at Queens Boulevard, at a cost that is 10 times greater than the cost of restoring the statue, and WITHOUT ever returning the statue to its base once everything is restored!
Would you restore the frame of the Mona Lisa, then put just the frame on display while sending the actual painting somewhere else, and expect the public to believe that's terrific? That's what is happening. The only beneficiary here is Brooklyn's private Green-Wood cemetery, which received a valuable colossal public art statue——still public property ——for the cemetery to display as it pleases.
That's why this issue is not over, yet. And, it's a perfect example of why Queens is the laughingstock of art, among all of the City's boroughs.❞
I still don't understand what was the reason for having the statue removed. What did it have to do with political correctness?
As terrible as the removal of the statue has been, at least the flower colors are a good idea.
But why are we getting them from out of the borough, much less out of the state???
Some BS women's activists were claiming it was a sexist and anti woman.
I still don't understand what was the reason for having the statue removed. What did it have to do with political correctness?
Not everyone understands that art is usually/often full of allegories and is not to be taken literally.
"A municipal building is not an appropriate place for a statue that portrays women as evil and treacherous," according to Claire Shulman.
The statue was a bit controversial from the get-go.
LaGuardia didn't so much "gift" it to Queens so much as banish from Manhattan to the "hinterlands".
He didn't much care for having to see its nekkid man-butt out the window every day. Or so the story goes...
The political correctness, or "incorrectness" of the sculpture stems from the fact that "Civic Virtue" is depicted as a Promethian male giant trampling upon "Unrightiousness" represented by two prostrate female figures.
In other words, rather sexist by today's standards and probably offensive to some when it was new. Though it is obviously drawing on classical iconography.
In any case, it seems the peaceful residents of Green-Wood cemetery are preoccupied with other matters and are not likely to kick up a fuss...
Weiner and Marshall were "offended" by it. Plain and simple.
Folks, take a good hard look at the fountain. it's so-o-o obvious that something is missing from it, no? LoScalzo's quoted comment above sums it exactly: Queens has now spent thousands and thousands of taxpayer dollars beautifying a painting's frame while the painting no longer is there.
Think about it. Is this logical?
Help me here. Do we laugh or cry?
Help me here. Do we laugh or cry?
We move.
"A municipal building is not an appropriate place for a statue that portrays women as evil and treacherous," according to Claire Shulman.
Right, no need for a statue when you can have Claire Shulman and Melinda Katz do it for you. Although it's hard to say which one is more evil, and which one is more treacherous...
You took the words right out of my mouth, last Anonymous!
Between the pure 'NAKED GREED,' corruption, graft and endless savagery and depravity that BOTH of these subhuman, intensely failed politicians (not public servants) have infected their destruction and poison over the entire borough of Queens County, there is nothing left but a total devaluation of all honesty itself! Likewise, that rotting corpse, Helen Marshall was responsible for wasting taxpayers' hard earned money by removing a 16-ton statue that everyone in Kew Gardens demanded that it stay where it has always reamined in the first place!
Imagine, then, if a least ONE purportedly female Queens Borough President (like the present, gender neutral monster-in-charge, Melinda Katz), wasn't so monstrously corrupt, uncaring, arrogant, detached, self-serving, public art denying, and ignorant of artistic allegory, and if the waterworks of that gorgeous fountain base were to be turned back on after such a long and intentionally stonewalling period of time (and even before the water came back to restore life, a full restoration of the fountain itself could have prevailed), what a great meeting place for the people of Kew Gardens it would be to take in that beautiful monument, have lunch on the fountain's steps, and maybe even stimulate the local economy with additional new businesses for luncheon and other relevant services cropping up along an ugly, vacant and generic strip mall like Queens Boulevard——and, ALL of it could have begun BECAUSE of a single, unified act of public goodness in repairing, cleaning, restoring, conserving and preserving the entire body of intact work for posterity, instead of imposing a dereliction of public duty on the blighted and neglected site (since even before an ugly monster like Claire Schulman soiled Borough Hall with her decaying, wrinkly ass), and worse, banishing 'CIVIC VIRTUE' to a Brooklyn graveyard, abandoned and forgotten (and looking utterly ridiculous and grounded in a cemetery without its prominent fountain below to anchor and celebrate such a grand work that is not merely ornamental——but, RICH in COSMIC PORTENT!
Thank goodness the artist and sculptor, Frederick MacMonnies is long ago buring and gone to glory——because, THIS act of human greed and arrogance would have killed him dead all over again!
Only in Queens do we remove a statue and redecorate the base.
Civic Virtue Handout, Thursday, June 5, 2014.pdf (9,187K)
Civic Virtue Handout, Thursday, June 5, 2014.pdf (9,187K)
It should be returned..How much ugly art do people have to stand all over the place. Freedom of Expression. It was violated by removing this statue which belongs to Queens. I use to take a look left at it everyday getting off the Grand Central Parkway and waiting at the light. Now you see nothing. It is wrong and an act of vandalism. Was it truly even legal to remove it like that ?
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