Writer and musician Patti Smith joined New Yorkers this week in a rally to protest metropolis officers’ plans to destroy Elizabeth Avenue Backyard, a sculpture backyard tucked away within the busy Decrease Manhattan neighborhood of Nolita, to make means for an inexpensive housing growth for low-income seniors. After being denied protections beneath a legislation that grants artists the appropriate to stop the destruction of their work, the non-profit that manages the backyard is making ready for the potential for eviction.
Smith carried out her 1988 music Folks Have the Energy on the backyard’s Olmsted Brothers-designed iron gazebo on Tuesday (1 April). Smith—who, together with her collaborators Soundwalk Collective, exhibited at Kurimanzutto in Chelsea earlier this 12 months—has been one of many backyard’s most outspoken movie star supporters. She penned a letter final 12 months to New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams, asking him to name off the town’s growth plans.
“The Backyard just isn’t solely an oasis of inexperienced area inside our metropolis, however really stands as a murals,” Smith wrote. “The trouble to put it aside is reflective of a mass effort to protect the pure and ever evolving character of New York Metropolis.”
Additionally current at Tuesday’s rally was Glee and Shiva Child actress Dianna Agron, who gave a speech in help of the backyard. Agron is married to the artist Harold Ancart.
‘This isn’t the top of the struggle’
For greater than a decade, native activists have been preventing the town’s plans to raze the roughly one-acre sculpture backyard to construct Haven Inexperienced, a proposed multi-use growth the town needs to construct on the location.
In February, the Elizabeth Avenue Backyard nonprofit filed a lawsuit in opposition to the town arguing the backyard is a murals that needs to be protected by the Visible Artists Rights Act (VARA), handed in 1990. VARA is an modification to the US Copyright Act and grants artists some rights over their work, no matter possession, in particular circumstances. Final month, a decide denied the park’s defenders’ request for a preliminary injunction beneath VARA.
“Whereas we’re deeply dissatisfied on this resolution, this isn’t the top of the struggle,” the non-profit group stated in an announcement, including that it has filed an enchantment. “We stay dedicated to defending the Backyard as a singular murals and a significant neighborhood area, and we’ll proceed to pursue all authorized choices to cease its destruction.”
However even because the group pursues the federal enchantment, the non-profit says it’s “making ready for the likelihood that the Metropolis might shut public entry to Elizabeth Avenue Backyard and set up fencing”.
The backyard’s historical past
Whereas situated on public metropolis land, since 1991 the plot the place the backyard is situated has been leased out—first to the late gallerist Allan Reiver, who reworked what was as soon as an deserted lot into an out of doors extension of his Elizabeth Avenue Gallery, situated next-door. The backyard was first opened to the general public in 2005 by way of the gallery, and in 2013 Reiver constructed an entrance to the backyard outdoors for the general public to make use of after studying of the town’s plans to develop the location. Immediately, the backyard welcomes greater than 200,000 guests per 12 months, and round 400 volunteers assist run each day programming on-site. Reiver died in 2021, and his son, Joseph Reiver, now leads the non-profit that manages the backyard’s each day actions and continues his father’s struggle to protect its existence.
The town’s proposed growth, Haven Inexperienced, would create 123 inexpensive residential models for seniors, plus ground-level business area, workplaces for Habitat for Humanity—a companion within the growth—and a small quantity of publicly accessible inexperienced area on-site. The models can be held at inexpensive rental charges for no less than the primary 60 years, an often-criticised aspect of the deal.
Reiver and the Elizabeth Avenue Backyard non-profit have supplied the town with numerous proposed different growth websites, however proponents of growth say it’s not a matter of constructing different housing— what New York wants is extra models, full cease. The town has reached a disaster level after many years of failing to construct sufficient inexpensive housing to maintain tempo with inhabitants and job development.
“It’s not like we’re saying ‘Don’t construct within the neighbourhood.’ We’re simply saying ‘Don’t destroy a backyard with a purpose to do what you need to do,’” Reiver advised The Artwork Newspaper final 12 months. “It’s a false selection on the finish of the day.”
