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Undone and Art's March Downtown

A museum undone

Speaking of comestibles, Philip Morris has an image problem. Some time ago, then, the parent company traded associations with lung cancer for something more altruistic. Now Altria, as it restyled itself, is leaving New York entirely—perhaps for somewhere with smoking allowed. So, too, is its funding for the arts.

Come this very spring, then, the Whitney will exit the Park Avenue tower facing Grand Central Station. At least twice in the past, an end to corporate sponsorship put an end to a New York museum’s satellite branch. Now it happens again, this time after a stay in midtown of some twenty-five years. The Whitney at Altria has had a low profile and only occasional impact. It has served less to proselytize for the museum’s mission than as a feeder system for curators and artists uptown. Yet it has lasted longer than many a New Yorker’s exposure to contemporary American art.

On has to feel torn. The museum will now put its energies into its planned branch downtown, at the foot of the High Line. This means no turning back on an ambitious plan for the Meatpacking district, where Dia once planned a new beginning. The small midtown site entailed something much more modest and more remote from the gallery scene. For that very reason, though, I shall miss it. I can pop in at midday, on an impulse rather than as a destination, and so can people who might otherwise not think about art.

They probably have mixed feelings, too. As Richard Serra found to his dismay with Tilted Arc, sometimes workers just want a place to eat, without sculpture looming over lunch. For now, however, they need not worry one bit. A final show seems determined not to get in the way. The work commissioned for “Undone,” say its curators, promises to disturb the notion of art as a “perceived completeness of form, space, or identity.” In practice, it looks simply too shy to mingle.

Tom Holmes staggers two chain-link fences, running not quite in parallel, both clearly visible from the street but safely out of the way as one enters. Colorful plastic inserts and billboard images, including at least three caffeinated beverages, might suggest the energy level of Manhattan. Mostly, though, they appear all too eager to please. They might be desperate to promote something to go with that panini you had taken in. At least the sandwich will taste ever so much better in a smoke-free city.

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