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April 18, 2008
Ratner and the Brooklyn Museum: Perfect together
The Brooklyn Paper, Letter to the Editor
To the editor,
Of course Bruce Ratner should not have been feted at the Brooklyn Museum (“Protesters call Bruce’s honor a ‘Dung Deal,’” April 12). His Atlantic Yards plan across from our splendid Williamsburgh Savings Bank building is an architectural nightmare (never mind that the city does not need another sports arena).
But the honor for Ratner makes sense, given that Arnold Lehman of the Brooklyn Museum has offered up his own horror —his ill-proportioned, multi-million-dollar glass snout on a Beaux Art building. That new entrance looks as if it’s still a construction site.
More important, entire galleries in the Museum have been cleared of works of art — treasures that rival those of the Metropolitan Museum — to make way for the occasional gaudy show of modern nonsense. Real curators have been fired, and the publicity department seems to be running the galleries.
Oh, dear.
Every time I renew my membership to the Brooklyn Museum (to which my father used to take me from the time I could toddle, over 50 years ago!), I hold my nose in disgust and hope Arnold Lehman will retire soon.
So is it any wonder that Ratner and Lehman have discovered each other?
Barbara Minakakis, Ditmas Park
Posted by lumi at April 18, 2008 5:10 AM