a noble experiment
A Queens shopping center has cancelled Saturday's Metro Mall Art and Science Fair which had been organized by Jacques Louis Vidal.
The young artist had planned a very imaginative sculpture/event along with 26 other artists and inventors to be held in what is apparently by any measure an under-utilized hall of commerce. He described his contribution as a "surrealist county fair", but the Mall suddenly put the kibosh on all their plans this afternoon because of its displeasure with an article which appeared in the NYTimes this morning. The Mall management thought the piece was "disgusting" for its reference to the number of the mall's store tenants which had closed, and while they apparently have no quarrel with Vidal himself, the decision was made that they would have nothing to do with the subject of the article. No Fair.
Ah, the power of the press, re-imagined. Or, better (worse?), unimagined.
[image from Vidal's Metro Mall event site, where it appears squeezed into a different proportion]