All the World's a Luxury Mall

The Shed was meant to artwash Hudson Yards. What artwashes the Shed?

- By Helen Shaw

You’re never that far from an advertisement at the Shed, the enormous culture building that sits at the top of the High Line. For one thing, even when you’re technically inside it, you’re still aware that it’s part of a shopping center. The Shed’s McCourt venue is a huge glass box, a lobby-like plaza on the south end of Hudson Yards that can be covered when necessary by the Shed’s massive, telescoping shell. The glass walls mean the world is never shut out: Look in one direction and you see through to the buildings on 30th Street; look in another and you see the Shops at Hudson Yards. So although performances in the McCourt may want to turn your thoughts to higher things, all that mall signage outside stays forever visible. You try to ignore the bright Sephora sign, and you adjust your eyeliner. Something else glows watches of Switzerland.

Of course, the Shed itself is an exercise in branding, an assertion of public-spiritedness. Article after article has been written about whether the mere presence of a theater complex can “wash” the extractive nature of the Hudson Yards project. The venue certainly makes it difficult, since its immensity reduces the performers inside it to tiny, isolated things. Having spent the week at Open Call, the Shed’s free performance series, I can say the liminal weirdness of the enormous quasi-lobby has not been lessened by the pandemic. This year, Open Call is also sort of a lobby: It’s a threshold series to the “real” season. Not coincidentally, it’s full of young, diverse, often queer or trans artists presenting free performances. They’re in the building, sure, but the desk hasn’t issued them a key.