Hugo Gellert's Seward Park Murals
Dear Mr. Keller:
I hope you will make a strong effort to Hugo the Hugo Gellert Murals at the Seward Park Houses. My work is mainly in literature, some of it on the literature of the 1930s. But I often have reason to look at and think about the work of painters and other visual artists of that period. Among them, Gellert is one of the most interesting and
significant.
If there were many such works around, one would not experience the possible loss of these murals so much. But there aren't; these are by now pretty nearly unique, and their loss would be a real tragedy.
In fact, I hope that perhaps you will take this occasion rather to celebrate their existence, maybe make them a focus for such a celebration. If those of us active in the New York Metropolitan American Studies Association (of which I am treasurer) can be supportive in such an effort, please do let me know.
There's one more thing I'd like to add: as a New Yorker, born early in the 30s, I'm particularly anxious to Hugo the few remaining examples of the art of that era. As I don't have to tell you, New York can be an unforgiving city in its constant modernization and change. In that process, precious places are too often destroyed, and then after, we mourn. Who, now, would make the decision to pull down the old Penn Station? No one, I suspect. But now it's too late for that wonderful building.
I hope it isn't too late for the Gellert murals.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Lauter |