New Yorkers are a jaded bunch—
but if you saw a massive gummy bear on your commute,
you’d want to know where it was headed.
— Quick, there’s a truck coming.
— Truth is, the bear and its handlers are headed to 4 World Trade—
one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in New York City—
to a studio-slash-gallery that the artists get for free.
— Could be the old Trojan horse scenario,
Trojan gummy bears.
— All because of this man:
Larry Silverstein,
the 86-year-old real estate tycoon behind Silverstein Properties,
the company that owns downtown.
Silverstein famously secured a 99-year lease for World Trade weeks before 9/11,
and made it his mission to rebuild.
He and his colleagues invited artists to work on the unoccupied 69th floor.
It’s not open to the public, and it could all be going away soon.
— What was the inception of this?
— Artists are always looking for space.
They can’t afford to pay rent.
The one thing we have available, we have the space.
So, my attitude was let them enjoy it.
Let their work become discovered as a result of it.
— The artists range from WhIsBe,
the dude behind the gummy bears;
Sean Sullivan, known as Layer Cake;
as well as JooHee Park, aka Stickymonger.
Collectively, their work is referred to as “street art”—
the progeny of graffiti,
fancified for galleries and commodified.
— Isn’t street art kind-of like a euphemism for graffiti,
and doesn’t graffiti just mean, like, plummeting property values?
— No, it depends.
Some you might look at and say, “Pure junk.”
Others you might look and say, “Very distinguished.”
— The deal was that, since last summer,
the artists would come in, put up their work for free,
and pay for everything out of pocket for a memorial exhibition.
The space has since been leased by Swedish music-streaming service Spotify.
— Do you think the art helped to sell Spotify on the space?
— I think it certainly didn’t hurt.
— Spotify will lease the top 14 floors,
which creates a conundrum for the artists:
Do you let an $8 billion company keep your work for free?
Especially when you consider the case of artist David Choe,
who painted the walls of Facebook and was paid in shares—
and made $200 million at the IPO.
WhIsBe is unruffled about the transaction.
— It would’ve been naive of me to think that the space would’ve never been leased out,
because it’s New York and real estate is so absurdly…
— It’s literally number 4 World Trade.
— Yeah, it’s number 4 World Trade.
Like, this square foot is probably, like, a good $1,000 or $2,000 just to stand on.
So, artists are the worst businessmen, and businessmen are the worse artists.
If there was anything that I wanted to get compensated for ahead of time,
I would’ve set those parameters up.
Otherwise, it’s kind-of shame on me.
— WhIsBe will wheel his $40,000 bears out of the building,
but his murals will stay.
This isn’t the first time Silverstein has hosted artists,
and some of them are used to being shuffled around.
Marcus Robinson, a painter and BAFTA-winning filmmaker,
has his studio on the 66th floor of World Trade 4.
He was in Tower 7,
and will soon move to Tower 3.
— Are you gonna miss this space once the tenants move in?
— Yeah, of course I’ll miss it.
But part of the nature of this whole project is continually moving with the changes.
— And while Larry Silverstein might be cool
with artists squatting in his multi-billion-dollar turrets,
he is, after, all a business man.
And any artist who feels ownership about the work they apply to borrowed space
can learn a valuable lesson.
— How much would it cost to have a studio on the 69th floor or the 66th floor?
— They couldn’t possibly afford it.
— That’s a confident response.
— It’s beyond the realm of rationality for them to contemplate paying rent here.
It wouldn’t work for them.