Reception
Metronome, and One Union Square, the building to which it is attached, have not been well received by critics or the public. Kristin Jones, co-creator of the work, complains that it is "the most unloved piece of public art in the city". Among Metronome's critics are New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, who described it as "Pretentious... the artists' basic miscalculation was to assume that a large surface called for comparably big forms... It's just some space in a box with a leaky hole in it." The New York Post put One Union Square at #2 on its "10 Buildings We Love to Hate" list, calling it "a grotesque modern nightmare." James Gaynor of the New York Observer wrote of Metronome, "Fail so big that no one can do anything about it... New York now has its very own Wailing Wall, a site (and sight) of cultural pilgrimage where the death of esthetics can be contemplated."
In various letters to the editor, the public has written of Metronome: "Well-intentioned, but ultimately flat, corporate art. It is a confounding installation based on a contrived theme ('the impossibility of knowing Time')"; " gigantic waste of time, space, and money seems like a satire on all public monuments"; and "a colossal waste of a facade". However, one respondent felt that Metronome was "a large and very elegant digital hourglass; time 'pours' from the numbers on the right to the left... The other elements are likewise very thoughtful and sophisticated ruminations on time, its passage and the ways in which we mark it."
Read more about this topic: Metronome (public Artwork)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)