The Seattle Times
July 26, 1995
Letters
Artistic Heritage - Put Music Hall Theater pieces on top of Seattle Art Museum
Kudos to the editors, and the staff writer and photographer for the July 12 story on John McFarlane, the building wrecker who had the good grace (to his own economic disadvantage) to save priceless and major pieces of the late Music Hall Theater, our now lost-greatest- architectural and artistically embellished building.
What to do with all those fabulous giant urns and other pieces? The city, in cooperation with the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Arts Commission and other principal parties to our civic, corporate and political leadership can now atone for their inglorious sins and transgressions in allowing the Music Hall to become a parking lot by buying all of those pieces and placing them – where else? – on the top and façade of the Seattle Art Museum’s First and University building.
Not only would this repay Mr. McFarlane for his farsightedness, but it would change the exterior of the museum from one of the most unpopular architectural works downtown to one of the true eclectic greatness.
While the museum’s main architect, Robert Ventura, will probably scream about “artistic integrity” and other tripe, a popular outpouring of support for the idea could change his regional rep from a scoundrel who ripped off Seattle with a second-rate work to an instant hero who understood that creating eclectically designed architecture using remnants from a community’s fantastic but demolished architecture really makes aesthetic sense.
Kenneth Akiva Segan
Seattle