ABOVE: Detail of Richard Serra’s new installation, A Matter of Time which opened earlier this week at the Guggenheim Bilbao. The New York Times calls it “one of the great works of the past half-century.”

The funniest thing about this New York Times review of Richard Serra’s new installation/renovation at the Guggenheim Bilbao has to be the correction which was added to the online version yesterday:

“Because of an editing error, a review in The Arts on Tuesday about Richard Serra’s sculptural installation at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, misstated the whereabouts of “Tilted Arc,” a Serra sculpture that was removed in 1989 from Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan. It was initially carted to a yard, not a dump….”

The original story, which remains intact on the Times’ website, does indeed say that Serra’s Tilted Arc was carted to a dump because the public hated it so much. But Michael Kimmelman also makes the much-needed point that Serra’s sculptures have grown on the public with a little time and patience, and he’s now gone from being perceived as “an angry man devising menacing sculptures” to a sculptor-colossus bestriding the world and blithely rearranging Frank Gehry’s lopsided gallery spaces with his huge steel ribbons. The review glows with praise, (”it’s a benchmark for the young century”) and the accompanying photos certainly help the case.

The Times‘ correction adds that Tilted Arc is now in government storage. It’s probably in that locked filing cabinet that no one has the key to.

LINK: The New York Times > Abstract Art’s New World, Forged for All