Reposted by Ismat Mangla
It is genuinely incredible to me how much evidence there is to support investing in the public good and how much animus there is to do this simple, effective thing.
Ismat Mangla
@ismat.bsky.social
193 followers 94 following 27 posts
Managing editor at Analyst News. Previously at Quartz, Al Jazeera, Money, MarketWatch, Columbia, Umich. Go Blue.
![Tablet Magazine
@tabletmag
The Perelman Performing Arts Center was unveiled in September 2023, steps from the footprint of the Twin Towers. Critics called it “glamorous” and “a retort to terrorism.”
But no one mentioned something almost too strange to believe: It’s a ringer for the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest shrine. The cube-shaped building is even veiled in marble that recalls the Kaaba’s black kiswa, and one corner points directly toward Mecca.
This is not an internet conspiracy theory. It’s a thing anyone could see. But not a single one of the dozens of distinguished art and architecture critics and urban planners who commented on the site for dozens of high-level newspapers and magazines ever so much as noted the similarity to the Kaaba, even in passing. Standing on a site visible to hundreds of thousands of people, the building has somehow rendered itself invisible.
[Underneath is a still shot from a video, showing the white cube of the Perelman Art Center, with "American Kaaba" written above it by the edits. The only comparison to the actual Kaaba is that they are both cubes.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2vtbmhmrwzbqcfv4we4uxzzt/bafkreighg42gvs54nbngdftc2v7xyr75d3q6372wtq7hrdwq2hfkf5pnya)
