"Port Authority Pulls The Plug On JFK's Terminal Five Art Exhibit"

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Port Authority Pulls The Plug On Terminal Five Art Exhibit
by Neille Ilel
The Queens (NY) Chronicle

 
Art and parties have always gone hand in hand, but throwing an art party at
an airport, and in a landmarked building at that, has its perils. Due to
charges of vandalism, trespassing and general bad behavior by guests at an
opening night event, the highly anticipated Terminal Five exhibit inside
TWA's landmarked airport terminal at Kennedy Airport had its permit revoked
by the Port Authority last Tuesday. 

PA spokesman, Pasquale DiFulco, said the show's curator, Rachel Ward, failed
to control the behavior of her guests during a Friday night party thrown by
one of the show's sponsors, V Magazine.  

Ward said the charges and the subsequent publicity were overblown by the
Port Authority and the media. "It wasn't a party, it was an event," she
said. "There are events in New York throughout the week and they take place
with proper respect." She invited the media and members of the PA to inspect
the space since it has been cleaned up after the festivities. 

According to DiFulco, guests smoked cigarettes inside the Eero
Saarinen-designed building. One guest broke an emergency exit door and
gained access to the airport's runways, where he was stopped by airport
personnel. Another vandalized a wall inside the historic structure with
obscene graffiti. On the Saturday following the party, there were cigarette
butts, broken glass and even vomit outside the terminal, he said. 

"The Port Authority has fought very hard for preservation and restoration of
this building," DiFulco said. "We simply could not stand by and let the
building be subjected to those conditions." 

Ward countered that the PA arrived at the same time as the cleaning crew on
Saturday morning, and wished they would have seen the space after the
cleaning crew had done its job. 

"We've invested thousands of dollars in restoring, repairing and cleaning
the terminal (from its original state)," she said. Ward has spent a year
putting together the exhibit, which uses the functional spaces of the
terminal to exhibit site-specific work of contemporary artists from 10
different countries. The show was scheduled to run through January 31, 2005,
but was shut down the first day it was to be open to the public. 

Benjamin Godsill, a 26-year-old artist and assistant curator at the Eyebeam
Gallery in Chelsea, attended the Friday night bash and said he found the
event much like any other art opening in the city. "It seemed like a fairly
normal art party.
There were a lot of young people." He noted that it wasn't excessively rowdy
or out of control, and that even though he was one of the last people to
leave, he did not notice any graffiti. 

"It was certainly in better shape than the Port Authority Bus Terminal,"
Godsill said of the space. "The mess was nothing that a five- or
seven-person cleaning crew couldn't accomplish in a few hours." 

Several attendees at an event the previous Wednesday evening had a different
take, however; they said the event suffered from an obvious lack of
organization, from security to refreshments. 

Betty Conlon, a TWA flight attendant who worked out of the historic terminal
for 40 years, was ecstatic when she heard that the building would be opened
to the public for an art show, but was disappointed in Wednesday night's
event, which she attended with several other TWA veterans. 

"It was a disaster," she said. There was no food or wine, only an open bar
of Grey Goose vodka, which is just asking for trouble, Conlon noted. "The
art was not identified. People just sort of wandered around." 

Conlon, an art lover, said she was touched by the work of Tom Sachs and
Toland Grinnell, and was thrilled to meet Susan Saarinen, the architect's
daughter. 

The most heartbreaking part of the evening for Conlon was when she realized
that two old TWA uniforms that she had been asked to bring had been stolen
from the upstairs spot where she had left them. "Those are irreplaceable,"
she said. "I was heartsick." Conlon went back to the terminal the next
morning to see if she could find them and was shocked by the mess of broken
glass and cigarette butts outside. 

"I don't know where Rachel's head was," she said. "I feel bad for her.
Obviously things got way out of hand," Conlon said. 

Ward said she is in talks with JetBlue, the new owners of the terminal, to
broker a way to reopen the show. 

Though the JetBlue spokesman said the airline supports the Port Authority's
decision and has no plans to fight it, Ward said that she has been talking
with Richard Smythe, vice president of development at the airline, who is
supportive of the project reopening. JetBlue invested $100,000 in the
exhibit. 

"It's a tremendous loss for the public not to see it," Ward said. She added
that she would not be opposed to working with another arts organization to
get a new permit if the Port Authority was unwilling to grant one
specifically to her.
 
"We're really trying to get attention focused, not on the event," she said,
"but on the exhibit."

Attached Photo:

An advertisement for the Terminal Five art exhibit at JFK Airport is one of
several on Woodhaven Boulevard bus stops. The Port Authority revoked the
show's permit last Tuesday.

21543_C993.jpg