Saturday, March 22, 2008

Noguchi Museum sinking

An $8 million project to further stabilize the Noguchi Museum building in Long Island City is scheduled to get underway Tuesday, museum officials said.

A first phase of stabilizing the building was done between 2002 and 2004 at a cost of $13.5 million after the structure started to settle unevenly, museum director Jenny Dixon said.


Sinking Noguchi Museum gets $8M

"This is a very old building, and extremely close to the East River," Dixon said, adding that the amount of work needed to completely stabilize the building was "grossly underestimated" at the time.

Construction is scheduled to conclude in early September. Until then, the sculpture garden will be completely or partially closed, though the rest of the museum will be open.

11 comments:

georgetheatheist said...

$8M from whom? Question: what are the visitation statistics of this museum?

Anonymous said...

$21.5 million, altogether. That's a lot of jack.

Anonymous said...

That 21.5 million could have been used to buy...um hire 100 city building inspectors.

Anonymous said...

a few acres for a waterfront park.

BTW, a friend used to work inside the former Sohmer building, and the south section was built over a former swamp - its out of line by almost 6 inches and the beams throughout the building are cracked and held in place by iron bars.

Hey, I want to live on the waterfront highrise.

Taxpayer money, instead of being used to buy the land for a park, will be used to shore up the buildings.

Anonymous said...

21.5 million they could have built the building 3 times on terra firma PROPERLY.

They may as well sail out to the atlantic and toss that 21.5 million overboard on the Titanic sight.
These people running the city should be in Bellview or jail

Anonymous said...

That's a damn ugly looking building to begin with
to exhibit the work of this gifted genius!

Aren't all those Queens West buildings ALSO
built TOO CLOSE to the East River?

At what rate will they eventually sink ?

Ha, ha, ha, and that proposed racist
Queen Catherine colossal statue would have
been up to her ass in water by now
if it had been built. Thanks be that it wasn't!

Anonymous said...

Ha, ha, ha, and that proposed racist
Queen Catherine colossal statue would have
been up to her ass in water by now
if it had been built. Thanks be that it wasn't!
--------

She will be - they are sending Brazilians to Astoria and we all know what happens when history gets mixed up with politics in Queens, dont we?

Anonymous said...

...or possibly even up to her breasts ;)

Anonymous said...

I doubt whether the Queen Catherine statue
will ever be reconsidered.

We've been told that the oringinal molds
and models of the statue at the Tallix foundry
in Beacon N.Y. have been destroyed.

This sounds like B.S. is posting his BS again!

Anonymous said...

I doubt whether the Queen Catherine statue
will ever be reconsidered.
------

Says who? QHS, Gotham Center, and the boro president's website still has the Queen.

Typical for Queens. They might have stopped the statue but not because Catherine is a fiction, but because it tread on black sensibilities.

They never purged this fiction from the books - it waits ready for the right tweeded group to champion it.

I call for QHS to reject political agenda and do the right thing - tell the public the truth!

Anonymous said...

Love this museum, and its spare, "plain" aesthetic seems to me well-suited to Noguchi's work.
But therefore...wonder if "fixing" the building is really necessary? There's a Japanese (and, in a way, Modernist) aesthetic principle of "imperfection holds the true perfection". It would embrace naturally occurring cracks and shifts. I suppose if the building is truly falling-down-unsafe...but I'd wonder.