April 2010 David Meinert (excerpted from Publicola):
"Seattle Center has never been, and was never designed to be, an oasis of green parkland. But, fortunately for the rest of us, Seattle Center is almost doubling its current campus open space by developing 3.5 acres of the former Fun Forest space adjacent to the EMP, and soon, 10 acres where Memorial Stadium now stands. That would bring the total of campus open space to over 30 acres from the now 17 acres. [...] The Wrights will invest part of their fortune to build a temporary exhibit of Seattle’s most popular visual artist ever, Dale Chihuly, who has millions of fans internationally, but no local long-term exhibition. [...]
As a resident of Queen Anne, a fan of local art and music, a regular user of the Center, an owner of a nearby business that might get some of that tourist business, and an oft-times community activist myself, I must say that I’m pretty happy the City has decided to take advantage of an obviously great deal.
Oh, but wait, this is Seattle.
Nothing is quite that simple. Chihuly is not that “cool” or “relevant” to some of Seattle’s most pernicious bloggers and forum commenters. Oh, and some “rich” folks might actually make a little more money. And in Seattle, that is horrible, because, well, profit is evil I guess, especially when it’s someone else’s who we don’t know. [...]
I want to say this to the critics of this plan – grow the hell up. Embracing diversity means embracing people with different ideas and tastes from our own. And in this case, even though I’m not a huge fan of glass art, and I don’t expect I’ll be going to this exhibit more than a few times when it opens or when I have guests in town, I do believe it can add a lot to the City in the form of tourism, diversity, beauty, and income. [...] Let’s be smart this time and not get bogged down in our loathing of local success at the cost of making this a great city."
Meinart, D. "Thumbs up on Chihuly at Seattle Center." Publicola.com. April 11, 2010. http://www.publicola.net/2010/04/11/thumbs-up-on-chihuly-at-seattle-center/
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