Are You One Of New York’s Metrohemians?

By James L. Weaver, MFA

Earlier this year, the Merriam-Webster added Metrohemians to their Open Dictionary:
Metrohemians: (noun) A group of pioneering artists who set up work studios in a depressed section of a city, only to be forced our of that area by high rent gentrification once the area becomes popularized by the well-heeled.

This results in the founding artists being forced to venture elsewhere and establish yet another
active art community. CHELSEA, SOHO, and DUMBO would be excellent examples of such Metrohemian communities. As author of the word, I wish to thank all of you who inspired me to come up with the word, after reading about and visiting many of your landmark galleries and haunts over the years, beginning in 1964, when NY taxis were more mustard-yellow, and reminded me of the Coney Island hot dog mustard, rather than today’s “now” yellow, which reminds me of huge, mechanized chunks of industrial-strength cheese jamming around the city. My argument being that it is possible for a now color to be so far “over the top” that it repulses rather than enhances. More importantly, we can only hope that NY’s ever expanding rodent population of 85M, (and how is that figure constantly tabulated for accuracy?), hasn’t already made an irreversible giant leap into social acceptance, by influencing city officials into selecting this particular shade of yellow. Another troubling observation I would point out, is/was the immediate acceptance of scaffolding as a sculpting medium. Case in point- Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfall. The overall concept was fine, but the scaffolding should have been

covered with Mylar or something that would showcase the water, rather than make it an incidental part of the piece. Surely there’s already enough scaffolding throughout Manhattan to navigate through, around and into without elevating it to a art form. Metrohemians would never go for that crap.