To the editor,
Of course Bruce Ratner should not have been feted at the Brooklyn Museum (“Protesters call Bruce’s honor a ‘Dung Deal,’” April 12). His Atlantic Yards plan across from our splendid Williamsburgh Savings Bank building is an architectural nightmare (never mind that the city does not need another sports arena).
But the honor for Ratner makes sense, given that Arnold Lehman of the Brooklyn Museum has offered up his own horror —his ill-proportioned, multi-million-dollar glass snout on a Beaux Art building. That new entrance looks as if it’s still a construction site.
More important, entire galleries in the Museum have been cleared of works of art — treasures that rival those of the Metropolitan Museum — to make way for the occasional gaudy show of modern nonsense. Real curators have been fired, and the publicity department seems to be running the galleries.
Oh, dear.
Every time I renew my membership to the Brooklyn Museum (to which my father used to take me from the time I could toddle, over 50 years ago!), I hold my nose in disgust and hope Arnold Lehman will retire soon.
So is it any wonder that Ratner and Lehman have discovered each other?
Barbara Minakakis, Ditmas Park
Miss Brooklyn monologues
To the editor,
I have shown sketches of Frank Gehry’s “Miss Brooklyn” tower to dozens of people and almost everyone who sees it sees what I see: a vagina-shaped entrance that makes it appear that Miss Brooklyn is squatting on her knees at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues (“Gehry to Brooklyn Paper: Miss Brooklyn ain’t dead — in fact, she’s hotter than ever,” Web exclusive, April 4).
I think Gehry’s frontal design is, to put it discreetly, simply naughty. Could he be pulling this satirical trick on us similar to his “Ginger Rogers–Fred Astaire” building in Prague?
Could all of the people who have seen the rendering — architects, designers, students and faculty of design — be crazy?
Brent Porter, Clinton Hill
The writer is an architect and professor at Pratt Institute.
The Paper is biased
To the editor,
The Brooklyn Paper has again shown its bias against the Khalil Gibran International Academy with yet another negative-toned article about the school (“Gibran finds a new home,” April 5).
Indeed, the first paragraph covered not the story at hand — namely that the city has found a permanent building for the school — but that parents say the city had “bamboozled” them by the decision.
And on the Paper’s Web site, there is not a single positive, let alone neutral, report about the Academy and the potential opportunities it brings to children in a country that knows little about the Arab world.
I believe your articles have contributed to — and even helped to contrive — the controversy surrounding what you dub the “controversial Khalil Gibran International Academy.”
What controversy? Two dual-language French-English public schools opened this fall, and we have not heard a peep from the media about these schools. Your anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias is not so hidden in a newspaper that represents a borough with the second largest Arab population in the country.
Your New York Post–style tabloid rhetoric is reminiscent of, well, the New York Post.
Anthony Vassallo, Park Slope
Editor’s note: Most of our coverage focused not on the school’s curriculum, but on the Department of Education’s ineptness in finding it a home. Our sole editorial on the subject chastized the department for foisting the new school on existing schools without a bit of consultation with parents and administrators at those schools — a pattern that continued in the case that Vassallo cites.
Dump Shelly!
To the editor,
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has stabbed his constituents and the people of New York City in the back — again — by killing the congestion pricing plan. In doing so, he has also killed the improvements to public transportation and infrastructure.
And, he killed it in the most cowardly and undemocratic way possible — in a closed, secret vote that does not allow voters to hold anyone accountable for sabotaging the foundation for our children’s prosperity.
So what we should do is hold them all accountable by firing them all!
But above all, voters should immediately excise Sheldon Silver from the body politic. Our city, indeed the entire state, would immediately make progress in every category.
Scott Powell, Park Slope
McCain needs Rudy
To the editor,
Your article about John McCain (“McCain walks the walk in Bay Ridge drop by,” April 12) reminds me that the Republican nominee need look no further than former Mayor Giuliani for a running mate.
Rudy is a profile in courage and a proven crime fighter. As a two-term mayor in a city previously dominated by political corruption and one-party rule, he turned the Big Apple around.
After 9-11, he served as a beacon of strength for all New Yorkers.
Perhaps more important for the GOP ticket, Giuliani has consistently been able to attract large numbers of first-time, independent and moderate Democratic voters.
A McCain-Giuliani ticket would make New York and other northeast states competitive for the GOP and provide a great choice for voters.
Larry Penner, Great Neck
