The circle with its column and fountains, the white tower with the slot windows cut through it in a line, the tall galleries inside, the works in glass and terracotta light.
Aileen Osborn Webb founded the museum in 1956 as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. Its building at 2 Columbus Circle was built in 1964 by Edward Durell Stone for Huntington Hartford's Gallery of Modern Art and was nicknamed the lollipop building for its ground floor columns. Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works reclad it, and the museum opened there in 2008.
Source · Museum of Arts and Design ↗
The nine storey tower on the circle sheathed in white glazed terracotta and glass, the vertical slot of windows snaking up its face, the circle with the column and monument and the ring of fountains, the park behind. Mood: columbus circle at rush hour. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.