Renzo Piano, the 77-year-old Italian architect who designed the building (and the Shard in London, and the New York Times building, among others), gave the most colorful remarks of the day, saying that “this building doesn’t touch ground, it flies.”
Piano explained that his design for the building was inspired by the art that’s inside it: “It’s American art. Art is a freedom, but American art is especially free. A bit wild, a bit impolite, but free. A building has got to be able to express this,” Piano said, before saying that its position facing west helps it “talk to the rest of the world.”
“It talks to the traffic of the highway — there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s New York — and then it talks to the [Hudson] river, and then further west and then it talks to Los Angeles a bit,” Piano said. “This building is a stretch between New York and the rest of the world.”
“Bravo, Renzo!” an enthused de Blasio exclaimed about the architect’s work in his best Italian accent, before complimenting the museum’s lobby, or piazza, as Piano had called it. De Blasio, an Italian American who recently made a trip to Italy, couldn’t resist: “Che bella piazza!“
This is the fourth location of the museum, now situated between the High Line and the Hudson at 99 Gansevoort Street. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney first opened its doors in 1931 on West 8th Street in Greenwich Village. Her granddaughter, Flora Miller Biddle, recalled her remarks from the time, during the Great Depression: “It is especially at times like these that we need to look to the spiritual. In art we find it.”
On Thursday, Biddle said her grandmother’s words still ring true: “The need for art has never been greater,” she said. “For art can lift us, it can tell us who we are, who we’ve been, and who we can be.”
Adult tickets to the Whitney are $22, senior tickets are $18, and it’s free to everyone 18 and younger.
Article Appeared @http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2015/04/michelle_obama_about_the_new_whitney_i_know_the_feeling_of_not_belonging_in.php