The Artist and the Slumlord: A Photographer's 1970s Quest to Unmask an NYC ... - Curbed National
No real estate topic—not even "poor doors" or mega skyscrapers—engenders more fierce debate in New York City than gentrification. The narrative is familiar: in neighborhood after neighborhood, older, poorer tenants—both residential and commercial—are forced out by rising rents and new construction. While the park itself is an emblem of gentrification, it's the new Whitney Museum at the park's Gansevoort Street terminus that serves as the current bellwether of the area's transformation. However, on a recent visit to the new Whitney, my eye was caught by a different barometer of gentrification—a sign that in other neighborhoods, change is slow, and sometimes less visible from the street than it might initially appear. On the fifth floor, I was delighted to find a piece that the museum rarely displayed in its old Madison Avenue home: Hans Haacke's conceptual artwork , Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 ,... Though gentrification wasn't Haacke's primary concern when he created the work in 1971, the piece serves as a jumping-off point for examining how neighborhoods like the East Village and the Lower East Side have evolved over the last four and a... Source: curbed.com
