Rosemary Milne
How to Clothe a Naked City: Architectures in a Discrepant Landscape
Exhibition proposal: Architectures unpack across Manhattan
An 1847 photograph pictures the Brennan Farm, perched atop a crumbling cliff as 84th Street rends through the land. Edgar Allan Poe boarded here, living on the verge between two landscapes: the “islan
School/Level
Category
Year
Manhattan is a landscape flattened. Once the "Island of Many Hills," it has since been bulldozed and recreated - flattened, stripped naked, and re-dressed. Following investigations into Manhattan's Theatre and Garment districts, nine theatric Architectures unpack across Broadway as a jacket unpacks from a wardrobe, each one a measure in the landscape. The Architectures measure the topographic discrepancies of Manhattan's landscape, and, in doing so, give utterance to the demographic discrepancies of Manhattan as an urban space: Architectures archive changes in height across time, and in doing so create stages for those on the margins of Broadway: vendors, artists, buskers, veterans, poets, peanut sellers and street performers.