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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhen Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/trump-files-when-donald-destroyed-priceless-art-build-trump-tower/
To build his skyscraper, Trump first had to knock down the Bonwit Teller building, a luxurious limestone building erected in 1929. The face of the building featured two huge Art Deco friezes that the Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted to preserve. The museum asked Trump to save the sculptures and donate them, and the mogul agreedas long as the cost of doing so wasnt too high.
But then, according to journalist Harry Hurt III in his book Lost Tycoon, Trump discovered that taking out the sculptures would delay demolition by two weeks. He wasnt willing to wait. On his orders, the demolition workers cut up the grillwork with acetylene torches, Hurt wrote. Then they jackhammered the friezes, dislodged them with crowbars, and pushed the remains inside the building, where they fell to the floor and shattered in a million pieces.
The art world was shocked. Architectural sculpture of this quality is rare and would have made definite sense in our collections, Ashton Hawkins, the vice president and secretary of the Mets board of trustees, told the New York Times. Robert Miller, a gallery owner who had agreed to assess the friezes, told the paper that the reliefs are as important as the sculptures on the Rockefeller building. Theyll never be made again.
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Trumpposing as spokesman John Baron, one of the fake alter egos he used to speak to the press throughout his careertold the Times that he had the friezes appraised and found they were without artistic merit and werent worth the $32,000 he supposedly would have had to pay to remove them intact. Can you imagine the museum accepting them if they were not of artistic merit? Hawkins said in response.
dalton99a
(81,673 posts)MFM008
(19,827 posts)He's doing to the country.
LisaM
(27,848 posts)BTW, thank you for posting this, I've been searching around for a piece on this very subject.
Miles Archer
(18,837 posts)He tweeted the link today in response to Trump being sad over destroying our "beautiful and historic" Confederate monuments.
LisaM
(27,848 posts)I didn't know the name of the building they let him destroy to build his horribly ugly tower.
madaboutharry
(40,245 posts)He gets joy from destroying things.
annabanana
(52,791 posts)for scale:
for detail:
syringis
(5,101 posts)...we got that :
I have seen beautiful old street clocks.
This one is just as horrible as the vulgar tacky tower.
He has never enough of that golden stuff??
justhanginon
(3,290 posts)does not have some sense of vulgarity attached to it. He surrounds himself with it. Whether it be his rediculously overdecorated
ostentatiously golden home in Trump Tower or Mara-Lago which looks like a bordello on steroids, they reek with a lack of taste. With Republicans in general I have found they are basically a disaster for the arts because they simply cannot make a direct correlation between the aesthetic and their lust for money and power.
syringis
(5,101 posts)His triplex has the most hideous decor I have ever seen. A nightmare
Is it not possible to legally save antics from destruction ?
Here (Belgium), a building can be classified. It is possible to classify just a part or even a specific piece, decoration, whatever worth to be preserved.
It avoids brutal destructions.
It is a shame for the friezes. In french we say : donner des truffes à un cochon (feed pigs with truffles)
mtngirl47
(992 posts)Trump is a cretin!
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)not surprised he destroyed them. Only money and Ivanka are beautiful to him, no matter how many times he throws the word around.
syringis
(5,101 posts)I could'nt find it.
I remember him saying he has replaced cheap craps by nice antics or something like that...
A friend of mine, a historian of arts said Trump and his architect deserved to be hanged at the top of the monstruosity that replaced the Bonwit building.
Blue Owl
(50,547 posts)n/t
flibbitygiblets
(7,220 posts)Poor kid, named after a fake person. (I know, I know, not going after the kid, just the idiot father)
BigmanPigman
(51,649 posts)along with a million other reasons. He was, is, and will always be a shithead.
suffragette
(12,232 posts)keithbvadu2
(37,008 posts)Was this before the Trump Foundation could have paid him for them?
Hugin
(33,222 posts)They probably got the standard, "You can say you were working for ME! ME! ME!" line.
sandensea
(21,711 posts)Killed by greed and shamelessness.
NRaleighLiberal
(60,031 posts)Worst Narcissist Ever.