The New Museum’s Ideas City Festival Gets an Upskirt Tent

by Corinna Kirsch on May 2, 2013 Opinion

MirrorMirror won the best tent-design award for the New Museum’s Ideas City festival, where it will debut this weekend. The mirrored tent has good intentions, giving pedestrians a new point of view on the Bowery. That sounds fun enough, and if we take Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate as an example, people just really love funhouse-style mirrors. But as much as people love mirrors, they also hate crowds. Combine the two, and you get MirrorMirror.

Traffic jams of gazers. Upskirt views. Vertigo.

We’re not the only ones who hesitate to call think the tent will be a brilliant idea. At The Wall Street Journal, Ralph Gardner, Jr. has expressed similar concerns:

And what of the outside of the shed? Don’t get me wrong. I’m excited about it. Who doesn’t love mirrors? Actually, probably people into whose windows they shine. If it turns out to be a sunny day—and let’s hope it does—a mirror the size of the one at Keck Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea shining into your apartment may require you to don sunglasses and draw the shades.

Let’s hope the New Museum’s figured out how to avoid melting their neighbors’ eyeballs.

 

 

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