Keep off the Grass

Flanked by two of New York’s largest green spaces—Central Park to the east, and Riverside Park to the west—Manhattan’s Upper West Side is certainly not short on opportunities for outdoor recreation. Nevertheless, the neighborhood gained 14,000 square feet of greenery last week with the opening of The GREEN on Lincoln Center’s Josie Robertson Plaza. Designed by the theater world veteran Mimi Lien, the installation lays a synthetic turf lawn over an austere hardscape. The space has begun, and will continue, to host a program of open air performances through September.

During a weekend morning visit, the scene was strangely reminiscent of an idyllic suburban lawn, complete with freshly mown grass (the “biobased SYNLawn” turf was carefully trimmed to ensure a seamless expanse) and a monumental garden sprinkler in the form of Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s otherworldly Revson Fountain, installed in 2009. By eight o’clock Saturday morning, the space was buzzing with visitors. Wonderfully (and surprisingly) The GREEN is open to dogs.

Lien’s intervention temporarily remakes a spartan plaza into a verdant public lounge. The north and south edges of the lawn arc steeply upward in the manner of skatepark half-pipes. I spotted no fewer than a dozen children chasing up the grassy walls before sliding, gleefully, back down. The turf is inviting, spongy and soft, almost like the real thing, without the bugs. In that respect it’s just about perfect. But if there were one gripe worth mentioning, it’s that there simply isn’t enough daytime shade. Stop by early in the day, and you’ll be lucky if you nab a shady spot in one bend of the half-pipe. As the summer wears on and temperatures rise, I’m unsure whether the sun-scorched GREEN will remain so pleasant.

For the time being, the lawn dramatically recalibrates the neighborly dynamics of Lincoln Center’s three signature theaters. The GREEN’s half-pipe closes off the north and south sides of the plaza, hiding entries to two venues. To the south, the New York State Theater (designed by architect and Nazi sympathizer Philip Johnson, it opened in 1964 and was ignominiously renamed for the billionaire benefactor David Koch in 2008); to the north, David Geffen Hall (previously known as Philharmonic Hall and, until 2015, Avery Fisher Hall), which is currently undergoing a $550 million renovation led by Diamond Schmitt Architects and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. The lawn frames the principal façade of the Harrison & Abramovitz–designed Metropolitan Opera House, undoubtedly the best building of the bunch, if only for its spectacular, space-age interiors.

These halls were widely perceived as inaccessible before the pandemic shuttered them. To these bastions of élite, high-culture snobbery, the well-intentioned GREEN appears to proffer an antidote: Open and inviting, with free outdoor concerts, it is a gift to a beleaguered, pandemic-weary public. But like the turf—which very closely resembles grass but never approaches the real thing—The GREEN might only be a pleasing simulation of public space. A recent event illustrates the problem.

On May 13, 200-plus members of unions representing the Met Opera’s stagehands, musicians and backstage workers held a public rally to call attention to the institution’s labor disputes, which were made worse by the pandemic. Citing the financial strain from a year of cancelled performances, the Met’s leadership has called for a slate of deep pay cuts and reductions in benefits for any new labor contract. Failing to reach an agreement with the unions, the Met recently outsourced work to non-union workers. When the company’s stagehands convened to voice their collective outrage last week, they gathered not on the bright new lawn in front of the opera house, but rather on the narrow sidewalk along Columbus Avenue. Metal barriers had been erected prior to the rally, locking the demonstrators out of The GREEN.

Billed as “a welcoming and safe place for live performances, family activities, and civic engagement,” and “public space for a new era,” The GREEN failed to live up to its organizers’ hype in its first week. The GREEN mimes an arcadian vision of public space, open and free for all, but it remains privately owned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.—the landlord of the organizations that call the sprawling center home. Matters of public significance, such as the fate of union labor at the largest cultural institution in the United States, should rightly be debated in the public realm. But as soon as civic engagement ran afoul of the corporate interests of Lincoln Center, its landlord exercised its property rights and built a wall. Not even Lien, a bona fide “genius,” as a 2015 recipient of a MacArthur grant, can square this circle. The contradictions of privately owned public space are irreconcilable. So long as powerful institutions can say “keep off the grass,” then it isn’t truly public, is it?