![]() They all love New York, where they and Milly, their Maltipoo, live on the top two stories of a rented town house on the Upper West Side. The kids are in a French day camp-Poots’s mother is French, “so that’s the language we’re starting them with,” she says. “They love the really scary rides,” Poots says, “the ones that terrify me.” Spellman checks in on them by phone before we order. Their two children, eleven-year-old Lucy and seven-year-old Thomas, are in Coney Island this evening with their babysitter. Poots is a Scot, and Spellman grew up in Iowa. The idea is to help audiences expand their minds through the arts, but to do it in a convivial way.”Īfter a somewhat exhausting tour, we go for dinner to a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurant called Taboon, on Tenth Avenue. The Shed is very interested in how we can change the rules of engagement. “Sometimes we’ll use the set-up of the art gallery for performances, where you’re not in a fixed seat and other times, we’ll use seating to heighten the concentration of looking at art. (The bad news is that it’s uncomfortably close to Thomas Heatherwick’s $150 million Vessel, the “stairway to nowhere,” as it’s been deemed by some, a cumbersome architectural folly that has no connection to The Shed.) Some people will be seated in The McCourt, while others will be standing. It will all happen in The McCourt, with its movable shell, which is located just where the High Line ends. At the far end, Poots is in conference with the “way finders.” The 17,000-square-foot adjoining hall (it’s called “The McCourt”) is usually exposed to the skies when its outer layer is nested into the fixed building, but at the moment, it’s covered by The Shed’s most distinguishing feature: a telescoping shell made of steel and a clear, lightweight polymer that moves out (and back) on gigantic rail tracks, turning it from an outside plaza to a large-scale performance space for 1,250 seated or 2,700 standing. We go in a side door, put on hard hats, and walk up to the second level-a vast, 12,500-square-foot, column-free gallery-moving gingerly to avoid electrical cables and other obstacles. She’s a vivid, effervescent beauty in a colorful sleeveless Missoni shift and sneakers without laces. “Alex is inside with the graphics team, talking about signage and ‘way finding,’ ” Spellman says, laughing. It’s Kathryn Spellman, a sociologist and visting professor for Islamic Studies at Columbia University and the wife of Alex Poots, The Shed’s founding artistic director and CEO. But then, hooray, halfway down the block I see a blonde woman waving both arms, and I breathe a sigh of relief. ![]() There are no signs, though-this is Hudson Yards, where one of the biggest urban-renewal projects in New York City is in full swing, and the landmark I’d been given, a pizza parlor, refuses to reveal itself. Scheduled to open this spring but still under construction, The Shed is New York’s keenly anticipated new year-round, all-purpose cultural emporium for music, dance, theater, and visual arts. On a sweltering afternoon in mid-July, I’m on West Thirtieth Street in Manhattan, looking for the entrance to The Shed.
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