METRONOME

Do you see what’s on the façade of One Union Square building? The “Metronome” is a controversial work of art composed, on one side, of a huge digital clock, on which the first seven figures on the left show the current time, with hours, minutes, seconds and tenths of seconds, and the last seven, when read from right to left, show the time remaining in the day; on the other side are a series of gilded concentric circles and a sort of huge diagonal clock hand, and at the foot of the work is an enormous piece of bedrock.

As if all this were not enough, from time to time there are sudden jets of steam which come out of the central hole, as well as – in true Addams Family style – a huge bronze hand, a representation of the hand of the statue of George Washington, located in the park below...

The work, a metaphor of geological, solar, lunar, daily and momentary time, was met with indignation by New York Times readers, who, in the “letters to the editor” section, slammed the Metronome, describing it as a clear metaphor of a waste of time!