945 Madison Avenue

By naming his new book 945 Madison Avenue, Bill Jacobson discretely cues the prospective reader to the unusual circumstances in which he shot the book’s nine black-and-white and twenty-one color photographs. Even a cursory scan of the book’s contents reveals that its photographs date from the period between the Whitney Museum of American Art’s vacating the premises during the winter of 2014/15, and before June 2015, when the architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle began a renovation that sought to “preserve patina” and “correct damage” for its client, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.1 Still more uncommon, several pictures reveal that Jacobson’s three photo shoots—December 5, 2014, January 8th and 9th, 2015—coincided with the final stages of the Whitney’s leave-taking. As is now widely known, the Metropolitan holds an eight-year lease on the building, since renamed (after its architect Marcel Breuer), “Met Breuer.”

Edition of 100.