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Art
Center Sketches Future at WTC Site
by Etta Sanders
Until last month, The Drawing Center on Wooster Street was a well-respected
museum with a low profile and a lofty goal-to win a coveted spot on the
rebuilt World Trade Center site.
In the spring of 2003, 113 cultural organizations-as wide ranging as the
New York City Opera and the Museum of Human Anatomy-submitted proposals
to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) for facilities on
the site.
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The 27-year-old Drawing Center, the only nonprofit art center in
the country dedicated solely to drawing, had been planning to expand.
A move to the World Trade Center site would be a chance to reach
a far wider audience.
George Negroponte, the Center's president, and Catherine de Zegher,
its executive director, both Tribeca residents, felt that the institution's
mission of exhibiting historic works and encouraging contemporary
artists was a good philosophical fit with the LMDC's goal of making
the site a place for remembrance and renewal.
"Downtown has always represented to me a place where art is
made," said Negroponte, who is also a painter. "I really
felt that artists needed to be represented in some way at this intersection
of memory and the ability to make something new."
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Last month, their aspirations
became reality. At a ceremony at the World Financial Center, it was
announced that the Drawing Center, the Signature Theater, the Joyce
International Dance Center and the newly conceived Freedom Center
would occupy the planned cultural complex at the trade center site.
It was the culmination of months of rigorous scrutiny of complex proposals,
and anxious waiting.
Uncertainty about the decision was not the only thing that kept Negroponte
up at night. His second child was born in November. "One night
I'd have a sleepless night because of the children. The next night
I'd have a sleepless night because of the LMDC," he said.
In February, the LMDC announced a "short list" of 15 institutions;
the Drawing Center was on it. The process intensified with a series
of interviews with state, city and LMDC officials. Applicants were
asked to produce enormous amounts of information, often on short notice.
It was "hair raising," de Zegher said, but also encouraging.
"They asked us what would be our ideal Drawing Center? What would
be our ideal collaboration with other institutions on the same site?"
With much of the public attention focused on whether the New York
City Opera would be selected and leave Lincoln Center, the Drawing
Center was off the public radar. Then on May 27, the pair was "energized"
by a New York Times editorial that said the Signature Theater, the
Joyce and the Drawing Center together would "offer a diversity
and a quality of cultural imagination that fits Lower Manhattan"
and would "galvanize" its cultural life.
On June 10, at 9 a.m., just hours before the LMDC made public its
decision, de Zegher and Negroponte got the call they had been hoping
for.
"At least for the next 48 hours, we tried to enjoy it,"
Negroponte said. "We knew there would be a different reality
in a few days facing the tough issues we have to look at."
Those issues, including fundraising and space requirements, will be
the focus of a six-month, LMDC-funded feasibility study. While opening
day is five or six years away, de Zegher and Negroponte are now the
architects of their dreams, among them six exhibition galleries, programs
for local schools, and community forums for artists.
"Maybe we will become a part of a center of another era for Tribeca
in the visual arts," said Negroponte.
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