>>16366948 pb
>self-transforming machine elves took him on an exploration of the set of styles.
>
>They paraded before him Southwestern, Art-Deco, and thousands more.
>
>He got the idea to ask: can you show me a new style?
>
>They did, instantly, and he understood that there is an infinity of styles that we have not yet reified.
An executive order issued by President Trump this month limited the kinds of architectural styles for federal developments to a small list of options. Moving forward, the only designs for federal developments, according to the order, are Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and lastly: Art Deco.
More than any other part of the nation, South Florida is known for the pastel colors and soft curves of Art Deco design.
https://www.wlrn.org/news/2020-12-30/trump-orders-art-deco-one-of-the-only-acceptable-federal-design-styles-architects-are-not-happy
This position would seem to be at odds with Trump the New York developer back in 1980.
Why? That’s when Trump deliberately destroyed an irreplaceable work of art — two Art Deco friezes that graced the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue — and that was promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The premeditated destruction of monumental art is one of the acts that compelled Graydon Carter, then editor of the satirical magazine Spy, to mock the future president as “a short-fingered vulgarian.”
There was public outrage at the time, of course. “Architectural sculpture of this quality is rare and would have made definite sense in our collections,” Ashton Hawkins, then vice president and secretary of the Met’s board of trustees told Robert McFadden of the New York Times.[3] Trump, pretending to be his own spokesman, defended his decision. Trump’s fictional alter ego — “John Baron” — ied to reporters when he stated that “[t]he merit of these stones was not great enough to justify the efforts to save them.”[4] Hawkins disagreed. “Can you imagine the museum accepting them if they were not of artistic merit?” he replied. “Architectural sculpture of this quality is rare and would have made definite sense in our collections. Their monetary value was not what we were interested in. The department of 20th-century art was interested in having them because of their artistic merit.” [5]
More than three decades later, the loss of the building was still lamented. Writing in the New York Times in 2014, Christopher Gray succinctly recalled the loss: “The Bonwit Teller store is another lost landmark of the time when the 57th Street area was the home of suave and sophisticated shops instead of the brash hyperscraper. Designed in 1929 as the Stewart & Company store, it had an entranceway that was a stupendously luxurious mix of limestone, bronze, platinum and hammered aluminum.”[6]
When Trump sought the presidency in 2016, the sting of loss was remembered once again. “On his orders, the demolition workers cut up the grillwork with acetylene torches,” Harry Hurt III wrote in Lost Tycoon, a lowbrow takedown of Trump published in 1996 for millennial readers. The book was reprinted in 2016 for the benefit of Generation Z. “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.
https://medium.com/@nevaer1/when-donald-trump-destroyed-monumental-art-4140bfae17e6
….
owning the seething Libs, one building at a time …
…..