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Ambramovic bringing Koolhaas to Hudson

Koolhaas' design for the Seattle Public Library

New York Magazine’s “Vulture” blog reports some truly earth-shaking news for Hudson: Rem Koolhaas has signed on to build Marina Abramovic’s long-awaited performance art museum, in the old Community Tennis building on the north side of the 7th Street park.

Without exaggeration, Koolhaas is among the very most respected avant-garde architects in the world today. His involvement means that the building should become a destination not only for performance art afficianados, but also architecture buffs. 

According to the article, Ambramovic (who also has a house in Columbia County) is anticipating an $8 million budget. She also says that she’s advocating with the new Mayor to support a hotel which would accommodate the large number of anticipated visitors, some of whom might be looking for something other than a B&B experience or a 

It will be fascinating, among other things, to see how Hudson’s Historic Preservation Commission handles the project. I’ve long argued that preservation in Hudson should focus primarily on (A) preventing demolition of historic structures and (B) assisting homeowners with making—and finding funding for—historically accurate restorations. The question has always been (I remember raising this with my friend Tony Thompson way back when at a garden party held by Sarah Sterling in 1999) what Hudson would do if a truly famous architect wanted to build something cutting-edge here. Would we spurn a Richard Meier, or Zaha Hadid, or Gehry building because it was not period? Hudson is, today, a catalog of period vernacular American styles precisely because its building stock evolved with the times.

This project may put that theoretical question to the test.

Calling Hours

Added viewing hours for Laetitia Hussain’s installation at Basilica Hudson, which had several hundred people come through last weekend for the opening, have been set:

• 4-7 pm on Saturday the 18th;

• 4-7 pm on Sunday the 19th.

The show (which includes video, sound, paintings, and 1,000 plaster sculptures) comes down after that, so this is the last chance to see it. The program, which includes a detailed text by Patrick Terenchin, can be downloaded as a PDF, here; many photos have been posted at the Facebook event page, here. Above is a short interview with the artist by William Parker of CCScoop.

Uptown whirl

Image of Ackerman's building via Google Maps

Former Register-Star reporter Jamie Larson (now in journalism school) has posted an interview with the buyers of the Keystone building in Hudson, who are opening it as a restaurant called Crimson Sparrow. They are alums of wd-50 in Manhattan, which practices a science-based form of cooking known as “molecular gastronomy.” Jamie’ interview is viewable on Vimeo.

(This means Hudson will have a Red Dot, a Red Chair, and a Crimson Sparrow. Where is the love for the other primary colors?)

Upstreet just a few steps, I've had it confirmed that the sale of the Ackerman's building is finalized—sold to an arts-minded couple from Northern Dutchess, who may be contemplating a Guido's-style market in the ground floor space.

Meanwhile, a valued local source says that DPW chief Rob Perry has found not only the former Venus statue in the 7th street park, but also its elaborate base.

All this occurs in the context of business owners from 7th Street up (7up?) organizing to encourage foot traffic and improvements in their part of town. This follows on the heels of The now-defunct (but once very effective) Fourthdown and the current Belo3rd groups. Sooner or later, the merchants of the 500 and 600 blocks may have to stage a counterrevolutionary organization of their own...

Tonight

Laetitia Hussain opening at Basilica Hudson, 5-8 pm... Details at http://www.laeti.org

Walk in the woods

A carefully-built wall found in the middle of deep woods in Taghkanic (NY)... Must have been farmland many years ago.

Crowdsourcing the Super Bowl

Over the next few days, millions of shaky bets and empty boasts will be exchanged by football fans and other soothsayers who think they know in advance the outcome of Super Bowl XLVI (or XXXXVI to all you Roman numeral purists). Only a few of those millions of opinions and wagers on the New England Patriots and New York Giants will be accurate. But taken as a group, there conceivably could be some collective insight to be gleaned.

This raises the obvious question of whether the game’s outcome can be predicted by crowdsourcing—that is, by collecting a large number of predictions from the “crowd” online, and analyzing the results.

Instead of going stir crazy waiting for kickoff, I went online and randomly gathered 100 predictions from a variety of sources: Twitter, Facebook, football discussion boards, newspaper comments, and so on. Casual, generalized predictions—“Pats will prevail! Gints gnash Gronk!”—were skipped in favor of those who actually bothered to predict a definite score. (I also omitted predictions made by dolphins, camels, cats, gorillas, and the like, only because these species rarely predict actual scores as opposed to just scratching the eyes out of a picture of Eli Mannning or Tom Brady.)

For what it’s worth, her are the results aggregated from these random 100 members of the crowd:

• Predictions of who will win were split exactly 50-50.

• The average score predicted was 27.56 for the Patriots vs. 27.05 for the Giants—or 28-27 in favor of the Pats, if, like this New England partisan, you don’t mind rounding.

• Overall, those picking the Giants were slightly less optimistic than those backing the Patriots, with the former anticipating an average margin of victory of 7.5 for New York, as opposed to 8.5 for New England. However, pro-Giants prognostications tended to vary much more than pro-Patriots ones.

• The margin of victory most commonly picked for the Giants was 3 (15 times), whereas the margin of victory most commonly picked for the Patriots was  6 (8 times).

• The scores most commonly picked for the Giants were 27 (17 times), 28 (12 times), and 31 (10 times).

• The Patriots scores most commonly picked among those expecting a New England win were 24 (16 times), 34 (11 times),  and 21 (10 times).

• In the event of a blowout, the largest margin of victory that anyone predicted for the Giants was 30, as opposed to 25 for the Patriots.

• The highest score predicted for the Patriots was 47, as opposed to 45 for the Giants; the lowest score predicted for either team was 7.

• The Giants scores most commonly picked among those expecting a New York win were 24 (16 times), 34 (11 times),  and 21 (10 times).

• The most frequent predicted outcomes were 34-28 Patriots (4 times), 27-21 Giants (4 times), and 27-24 Giants (4 times).

All of this is, naturally, pseudoscientific at best. But if the opinion of 100 random internet denizens counts for anything, this game can be expected to be a dead heat, with the Patriots just a half-point favorite.

Battle of wits

Spotted in a window on 8th Street in Hudson… “By the author of Outwitting Squirrels.”