A slew of high-profile architects and critics, including Annabelle Selldorf, Steven Holl, Wendy Evans Joseph, Thom Mayne, Richard Meier, Michael Sorkin, and Robert A.M. Stern, have joined the campaign to save the American Folk Art Museum building. They have each signed an open letter, written by New York’s Architectural League, calling on the MoMA to rethink its plans for demolition.
“The Museum of Modern Art—the first museum with a permanent curatorial department of architecture and design—should provide more information about why it considers it necessary to tear down this significant work of contemporary architecture,” reads the letter, which was sent to the Museum of Modern Art on Monday. “The public has a substantial and legitimate interest in this decision, and the Museum of Modern Art has not yet offered a compelling justification for the cultural and environmental waste of destroying this much-admired, highly distinctive twelve-year-old building.”