{"id":8117,"date":"2018-07-30T09:15:20","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T13:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=8117"},"modified":"2018-07-30T09:18:32","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T13:18:32","slug":"liz-glynn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/07\/30\/liz-glynn\/","title":{"rendered":"Recreating A Gilded Age Ballroom Outdoors In Boston To Mull Our Economic Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWho has access to space, both public and private?\u201d Liz Glynn<\/a> says she wants to ask with \u201cOpen House,\u201d<\/a> her public artwork on Boston\u2019s Commonwealth Avenue Mall. \u201cWhat kind of city do we want to live in in the future?\u201d<\/p>\n

The artwork, on view between Kenmore Square and Charlesgate through Nov. 4, places a group of cast-concrete copies of luxurious Louis the XIV sofas, footstools, chairs and arches into the plaza. The sculptural grouping can feel like a monument or a mausoleum. Or like the wealthy denizens of Wall Street have occupied the public promenade.<\/p>\n

\"Liz<\/a>
Liz Glynn’s “Open House” on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall, July 27, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In fact, they\u2019re Glynn\u2019s recreation of the furnishings of the opulent end of the 19th century ballroom in the Manhattan mansion of William C. Whitney (1841-1904), a New York real estate developer, financier, and coal and steel magnate who served as Secretary of the Navy under President Grover Cleveland. \u201cJudged by any of the tests applicable to a human career, William C. Whitney must be considered one of the most remarkable men the country has ever produced,\u201d The New York Times gushed<\/a> when he died.<\/p>\n

The ballroom (which was demolished with the rest of the Fifth Avenue mansion in the 1940s) was designed by the architect Stanford White, who, Glynn notes, designed half a dozen residences in this Back Bay neighborhood as well as the Hotel Buckminster in Kenmore Square.<\/p>\n

\"Liz<\/a>
Liz Glynn’s “Open House” on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall, July 27, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Glynn, Whitney\u2019s ballroom epitomizes the opulence and \u201ccut-throat\u201d social world of the late 19th century Gilded Age. She aims to transform it into a \u201cpublic living room\u201d in concrete, which she calls \u201ca material of the people. It\u2019s a poor material. It\u2019s a material that was used in utopian public housing projects at the turn of the last century.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe piece is challenging the city in some ways,\u201d Glynn says, to look for ways of \u201cmaking a more equitable future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Liz<\/a>
Liz Glynn’s “Open House” on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall, July 27, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOpen House\u201d was originally commissioned by New York\u2019s Public Art Fund and debuted outdoors at the southeast corner of Manhattan\u2019s Central Park from March 1 through Sept. 24, 2016. It was brought here by the Boston independent public art curators Now + There, led by executive director Kate Gilbert.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really different space,\u201d Glynn says of this Boston presentation. In New York, the art was displayed at one of the entrances to Central Park, \u201ca pass-through\u201d space. The Commonwealth Avenue Mall is a \u201cmuch more intimate site. \u2026 It feels more room-like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Liz<\/a>
Liz Glynn’s “Open House” on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall, July 27, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Glynn grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts, studied at Harvard University, moved to New York in 2003, then to Los Angeles in 2006 to attend graduate school at CalArts, and still lives in L.A.<\/p>\n

Her breakout piece was \u201c24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project, or, Building Rome in a Day\u201d in the 2009 group exhibition “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus\u201d at New York\u2019s New Museum. In the museum\u2019s lobby, she and friends built a model of the ancient city from cardboard and the like and then destroyed it.<\/p>\n