MoMA to Demolish American Folk Art Museum

The American Folk Art Museum by Tod Williams Billie Tsien and Associates projects a bronze glow onto West 53rd Street in Manhattan. 

MoMA’s Act of Vandalism
by Martin Filler, New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/20 ... vandalism/

"When in 2011 the American Folk Art Museum was compelled to sell the decade-old building to its next-door neighbor—because the worldwide economic crash had caused it to default on $32 million in bonds used to finance the $18.4-million structure—some commentators sanctimoniously portrayed the debacle as the comeuppance of a quirky little institution’s overweening ambition. 

"Yet at that panicky moment MoMA itself came closer to economic disaster—with much greater sums in play—than has ever been publicly acknowledged. Its own financial foundering, precipitated by a considerably larger expansion extravaganza designed by Yoshio Taniguchi between 1997 and 2004, was allegedly averted only because some of its more deep-pocketed supporters resorted to emergency measures. One venerable trustee is said to have prematurely anted up what he had expected would be a posthumous bequest. 

"Williams and Tsien’s physically small (a mere forty feet wide and eighty-five feet high) but architecturally significant incursion into MoMA’s presumed turf has long been known to be a thorn in the side of Glenn D. Lowry, the Modern’s director since 1995, and it has seemed something of a grudge match from the outset. ..."

ArchitectureWeek's original cover story on the unique, bronze-clad folk art museum:

Folk Art Museum
by Michael J. Crosbie
http://www.architectureweek.com/2002/0424/index.html