Chicago’s Federal Center — two minimalist steel-and-glass towers, a 50-foot sculpture, and a one-story pavilion-like post office all placed around a large plaza in the middle of downtown — is a high point in American architectural modernism.
The work of famed architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the ensemble was sited and designed to express the ideals of an open government. And the quality of its architecture and Alexander Calder’s striking, vermillion-colored sculpture, Flamingo, are a gift to the city.
But leave it to the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency — both of which are intent on wielding a chainsaw against anything beneficial the government can provide — to see a prize like the Federal Center and actively work to muck it up.
The Trump administration this month has moved to fire U.S. General Services Administration employees who oversee and preserve more than 26,000 federally-owned pieces of art at or around government buildings nationwide, the Washington Post reported.
In Chicago, the decision potentially negatively impacts major works like Flamingo, but also the 101-foot tall Claes Oldenburg-designed Batcolumn sculpture at the Harold Washington Social Security Administration Building at 600 W. Madison St. and more.
A Chicago GSA spokesperson wouldn’t comment on the firings or their impact. But to let these Chicago works and 26,000 others owned by the federal government just drift without caretakers and preservation professionals looking after them is one among the many clear signs of this administration’s abject failure to take seriously its responsibility when it comes to the public good.
A national art collection
The move comes weeks after the administration put a chunk of federally-owned buildings up for sale, including the Kluczynski and post office buildings, both located on the city’s Federal Center plaza; the Social Security headquarters; and the Art Deco-styled U.S. Customs Building at 610 S. Canal St.
The GSA took the buildings off the market within days. But that the same administration that intended to sell these important — and occupied — buildings is now circling the valuable art work associated with the structures is more than a bit disturbing.
Nationally, the GSA’s art collection is a wide assortment of collector-quality sculptures, paintings and other art created by top-tier artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Maya Lin — most of it accessible and visible to the public. Locally, the collection also includes works by the likes of Sol LeWitt and Frank Stella.
GSA staffers got word their posts would be eliminated in a March 3 memo by acting GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian, according to the Washington Post.
In an insult to the pros who have worked to curate and preserve one of the world’s finest and largest collections, Ehikian told the workers their duties “no longer align” with the goals of the GSA and the Trump administration’s values.
Nearly 36 workers are impacted.
Time to sound the alarm
It’s not a stretch to consider these artworks vulnerable and in danger of being neglected or somehow sold off, especially given that they’re in the hands of a bellicose presidency with little respect for art or the arts — as proven by President Donald Trump’s ham-fisted and unprecedented takeover of the Kennedy Center.
With all that in mind, museums, universities and cities like Chicago ought to band together and speak up for this national artistic treasure and the people who have safeguarded it.
And the city and its congressional delegation must also make noise against selling off Chicago’s key federal buildings, such as the Kluczynski and the Federal Center post office.
After all, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., was so convinced that redeveloping the vacant Century and Consumers buildings at Adams and State streets would present a security risk to the nearby Dirksen federal courthouse that he earmarked $52 million to raze the classic towers.
Fortunately, the plan wasn’t implemented. But it’s up to both senators and members in the U.S. House of Representatives speak against this new threat to the Federal Center and other U.S.-owned Chicago art and buildings
Theirs aren’t the only voices that need to be loud, about this and other threats.
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