What Would Pei Say?

Sunni Mercer advises us that "good art asks a question" so perhaps WWPS? (above) will be one of mine.

Despite my musings about a potential Deep Deuce project on my other blog, I feel more drawn to the "underground Chinatown" story.

That said, I have no clear vision of what I will make of it. I want this project to give me some insight into that community, but what it's really doing is making me feel irritated at the OKC community for allowing such a rich and fascinating part of our history to become, literally, buried. Invisible.

I'm angry that we can't locate an archeologically preserved underground residence of any kind. It strikes me as incredibly foolish and negligent of our civic leaders to have made (as far as I can discover) no real effort to preserve any part of that place even after Mayor Shirk revealed it in a cover story of our state's leading newspaper. How is such a thing possible?

As a researcher (and as a citizen), I want to know.

But as an artist, my role is also to raise questions. And so I ask, what would I.M. Pei say about all this?. The famous architect was hired by OKC to compose an urban development plan for the downtown business district, and he did, and although the "Pei Plan" was never completed it did include the Myriad Gardens area along with the rest of the area above the former underground residences of Chinese immigrants.

I wonder if he heard about any of that. His business district plans for OKC were submitted before Shirk's 1969 newspaper report. But still . . . if he had known, what might he have proposed to help preserve and acknowledge it?

Surely the man who gave us the Louvre's pyramid could have designed some sort of window to our own subterranean heritage. If only he had.


Image source: Pei Cobb Freed and Partners, Architects, LLP