What's Your Big Bambu Project?

I'm a big fan of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  Central Park and the Met are my two all-time favorite reasons for living in Manhattan and I delight in being within steps of each.  I feel truly pampered in being able to take a jog in the park every morning, 'round the reservoir and on lovely paths with birds chirping, bicyclists wheeling past, and birdwatchers with binoculars and cameras at the ready.  Central Park in many ways defines Manhattan and contributes natural beauty to the already long list of reasons why New York is one of the world's greatest cities.

And right in the middle of it all on the East Side of Central Park is the magnificent Metropolitan Museum.  It's always interesting to pay a visit and in addition to visiting my favorites, I try to see some new exhibition or installation each time I go.  This past weekend it was the Picasso exhibit.  Unlike most blockbuster exhibitions the Met produces, this one shows off pieces from the museum's own collection, so although not a definitive retrospective (there are a number of important periods of Picasso's prolific career not represented at all) what is there is remarkable, including that amazing portrait of Gertrude Stein. 

In the summertime for the past 13 years, the Met has turned its roof into a destination in itself.  The section open to the public is called the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden and by itself it would be worth a visit because the view of Manhattan from there is simply breathtaking.   You see above the treetops of the lush green park to the Midtown skyscrapers to the South and on all the other sides, the apartment buildings that grace the park on Fifth Avenue and Central Park West.

And the view is just part of the reason to take the elevator to the roof.  For the past 13 years, the Met has invited a living artist to create an installation for the roof, open to the public from Spring through late Fall.  Each one has been special -- I loved the Jeff Koons exhibit of two years ago which included his famous balloon dog in red -- but this year is simply awesome. 

Big Bambu is an installation by the identical twin brothers Doug and Mike Starn, who are basically photographers who have expanded their repertoire to include sculpture, painting, video and installations like this one.  This structure is made of bamboo poles, forming a kind of cresting wave that people can climb in and walk on paths--all constructed of bamboo literally strung throughout the sculpture.  It is continually changing and evolving as the Starn twins and a group of rock climbers assistants add on to the structure.  I'm told there are 5,000 interlocking bamboo poles, all lashed together with 50 miles of nylon rope of various colors.  Throughout the exhibition, they will continue to add to it so that it will eventually reach 50 feet above the roof itself.  Walking the bamboo path into and up the structure takes you to a different, romantic, fascinating world.  (We were told that on Sunday morning a young man stopped at the bamboo bench that is part of the structure and proposed to the love of his life.)

What fascinates me is the thought of the conversations that took place between Anne Strauss, the Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Met, and the powers that be at this established institution who agreed to this adventure in living art.  Just the logistics of getting 5000 of these 100 feet long bamboo poles from North Carolina and Georgia where they were fresh cut for the installation, then the arrangements that had to be made in order for people to walk up and into the structure (you sign your life away in waivers, have to provide photo ID, need to put your sunglasses, handbags, cameras, even your Met button, into a locker before you begin your guided tour) without rendering the museum liable for injury or damage done while people engage--literally --with the work, boggles the mind.

Go Anne!  I think you should take on some other major projects we can't seem to pull off in this country.  Sounds like you know how to get things from the talking stage to the doing stage in short order.  How about figuring out an easy way to get people to JFK by public transportation?  Can you commission some artists to come up with a totally new mode of transport between the city and its airports?  Then talk the authorities in letting you pull it off? 

Even the Met could be involved: after it is built, a great installation could be made of how it was done.  And a section of it could appear on the Met roof garden!