Christopher Hawthorne is a fine architectural critic, so it was nice the bankrupt LA Times scratched up the money for him to look over Dallas’s new AT&T Peformings Arts Center. That he found nothing to add to what has been already been said (by John King here or by Peter Simek here) does not necessarily betray any lack of imaginative critical acumen. His lack of success didn’t keep him, however, for searching for something, anything, to say:
This month’s issue of D Magazine, which is almost entirely dedicated to coverage of the new performing arts center and the larger arts district of which it is a part, is full of sentences like this one about the developer Trammell Crow: “Crow was the first developer to buy into the proposed arts district, and the 90,000 square feet he purchased in the summer of 1978 for about $20 a square foot was worth $125 a square foot within three years.”
Actually, I can’t find another sentence like that in the entire issue, so it is not “full of sentences” like this at all. And by the way, that one sentence appeared in this article we reprinted from 1982 to give readers a perspective on the 25-year struggle to build the arts district . I’m glad Christopher was even able to find it, much less pluck it out. But it’s a long flight home, I suppose, and he did have column inches to fill.
8 comments
Does anyone else see the irony of complaining about a review with ‘nothing new to say’ when one of the articles just run was from 1982? Even if it is just ‘give readers a perspective’? It seems suspiciously like a cheap ploy to, um, fill some column inches.
I’m confused as to why he has his panties in a twist about that sentence. It’s pertinent information. And if that information did appear in an article from 1982 on the land that the Arts Center now sits on, is it not still important and interesting in 2009?
I’ve held this thought in for as long as I can: am I the only one in town who thinks that the “deep red, hard-candy gloss” of the perfoming arts center makes it look like an enormous Circut City? Or am I all alone here? …I’m just saying.
@ Amanda…a sentence from a magazine 27 years ago about real estate values is relevant? I don’t think so. A sentence from a magazine from 6 months ago about real estate isn’t relevant. It’s weird to send a reporter here, and get the story so wrong. Very weird.
@ sarah. You didn’t think the republished article provided an insight into the decades-long struggle to building the district? Or you didn’t read it. C’mon,’fess up. I won’t tell.
It seems a bit odd to criticize that the buildings seem aloof from each other prior to the Strauss Artists Square being completed, the element that is intended to link the two.
@ Amanda
Maybe I am misreading this post. I think that the idea, as I understand it, of pointing out that this land and development and deal is something that has stretched for two and half decades and to include what the land originally cost and how the value has changed seems completely relevant to me.
I also think the Winspear looks like a giant Circuit City though too.
I did indeed read it. But could you blame me if I didn’t? It’s a whopper of an article. (I’m guessing way more than 4,000 words.) I think it does provide some insight and important background… but with space for editorial content shrinking like it is, I’d think it’d have to be overwhelmingly relevant for all of those thousands of words, which didn’t appear to be the case.
Though I must say it was refreshingly devoid of those pesky anonymous sources that seem to be popping up so frequently.