artcritical backs the call to make OY/YO, the public sculpture by Deborah Kass, a permanent feature of the DUMBO riverbank. The work, commissioned by Two Trees Management Company, is scheduled to remain on view at Brooklyn Bridge Park through August 2016.
We support making it permanent for the excellent reasons given by artist Marina Adams in the petition to Mayor Bill di Blasio that she initiated, which we invite our readers to sign. We acknowledge that there are strong arguments against routinely making temporary public art interventions permanent simply because they resonate and are popular. One is that doing so might inhibit future temporary interventions; another is that it might aggrandize gestures that would be sweeter if they were simpler from artists invited to make temporary works but secretly hopeful of winning the bonus prize of permanence. There is always, however, an exception to prove a rule. The Eiffel Tower, initially reviled, was designed to be temporary. What would Paris be without it?