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A modern touch at city hall with help from a museum seeking money

NEW YORK — Corey Johnson, the speaker of the City Council, promised to blaze a new and more independent path for the council. Now that even applies to his taste in art.

The Whitney also sent over a polished aluminum sculpture by Robert Indiana. It depicts the word “Love” — the artist’s iconic image — and was placed on a windowsill in Johnson’s office.

It is tradition for new speakers to decorate their space with artwork borrowed from city museums, and their choices often reflect personal style and political roots.

The Whitney is in Johnson’s district, on the West Side of Manhattan. Jennifer Fermino, his spokeswoman, said the speaker’s office sent out word to various institutions that he was seeking artwork and the Whitney responded. Stephen Soba, a spokesman for the museum, said officials there chose the works: Kelly’s Green Panel (Ground Zero) and the sculpture.

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“I’m not the artsiest guy,” Johnson said, explaining he was happy to let the museum do the choosing.

The arrival of the works comes as the council is considering a funding request from the Whitney for the installation of a major public art project, called “Day’s End,” by David Hammons, a Harlem artist, that it wants to install on the edge of the Hudson River. Fermino said the museum is asking the council for $2.25 million.

Johnson called “Day’s End” an “exciting, great project for a great New York artist” and said there was no connection between the loan of the artwork and the request for financing. “I didn’t make any connection between the two things.”

Soba said the museum often lends artwork for display in elected leaders’ offices and the installation in Johnson’s office was “completely unrelated” to the financing request. The museum requested a total of $5 million in capital financing for the project — $2.25 million each from the council and the Department of Cultural Affairs and $500,000 from the Manhattan borough president’s office, Soba said. “The overwhelming majority of the funding is being privately raised by the Whitney,” he said.

Johnson said he planned to borrow more art for his office from other institutions and would exchange the pieces for new ones each year, adding that he wanted to display items from museums in every borough.

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“I am deeply honored to be able to show beautiful art from different cultural institutions from across New York City at City Hall,” he said. “We’ll do the Brooklyn Museum and the Queens Museum and the Museum of the City of New York and The Met and smaller museums.”

Johnson’s office also has two black-and-white photographs of Harvey Milk, a slain gay rights leader, and Larry Kramer, an AIDS activist and playwright. The photographs are on loan from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, and Johnson said he plans to keep them on display during his full tenure as speaker.

“They are very personal to me,” said Johnson, who is gay.

Kelly’s artwork reflects the artist’s response to the debate over how to create a memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack on the World Trade Center. The aluminum green trapezoid represents greenspace that could occupy the void where the Trade Center plaza once stood.

Johnson’s predecessor as speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, installed artwork from El Museo del Barrio and the Bronx Museum, according to Fermino. She also displayed photographs of New York street scenes from the Museum of the City of New York, which Johnson has kept on the walls in his office waiting area.

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Christine C. Quinn, who was speaker from 2006 to 2014, installed a large painting by artist Lee Krasner in her office from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Quinn’s office also had works on loan from the Guggenheim, the National Museum of the American Indian and other institutions, Fermino said.

Referring to previous speakers who displayed artwork on loan, Quinn said: “Gifford Miller had donated art. Peter Vallone had donated art. It was a tradition to have donated art.”

Quinn said it had no bearing on the council’s financing decisions.

“All of those institutions had requests for funding before me and it made zero difference,” she said. “We reformed the entire cultural-funding process in a way that many cultural institutions opposed while I was speaker, while that art hung.”

The city allocated $55 million to support the construction of a new building for the Whitney in the meatpacking district while Quinn was speaker.

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“When prominent elected officials display works of art on loan they are elevating the arts, they are making sure and actually sending a message that culture and the arts are important to them,” said Jimmy Van Bramer, a Queens councilman who is chairman of the Committee on Cultural Affairs. “That’s a good thing for those who care about the arts.”

Van Bramer also praised the “Day’s End” project. “There are very few works of public art of this magnitude by an African-American artist in New York City,” he said. “I believe the project is worthy of the funding that’s being requested.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio has no modern art in his City Hall office and no artwork on loan from museums, according to members of his staff.

But Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence, has been home to at least two exhibitions since de Blasio moved in that included numerous works of art lent by museums, including the Whitney.

De Blasio has been criticized for keeping some of the city’s most prominent museums and other cultural institutions at arms length, in contrast to his predecessor, billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg, who was a major donor to many of those institutions. It took de Blasio years to visit the High Line, which is in Johnson’s district, and he said last year that he had never been to the MoMA/PS 1 museum in Queens.

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That gives added punch to the introduction of modern art into the building by Johnson, who has delighted in contrasting himself with the mayor.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

WILLIAM NEUMAN © 2018 The New York Times

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