Houston Bowery Wall Debuts Feel-Good Message After Controversy

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — A new mural is up at the Houston Bowery Wall after a previous work there was erased amid controversy over the artist who painted it.

The wall, which spans a sidewalk near the intersection of Houston Street and Bowery, is owned by the property manager Goldman Properties. On Tuesday, Goldman debuted the latest in a series of murals it has commissioned for the wall, this one by the UK-based street artist Lakwena Maciver.

Maciver is just the fourth woman or 22 who have been commissioned to work on the space, according to street art activist Ann Lewis. Members of the street art community have been critical of the dearth of female artists represented at the Houston Bowery Wall, particularly after uproar over the mural's last artist and comments he made describing "rapey behavior." (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

In June, Goldman Properties tapped David Choe, a well-known and successful street artist. Choe has been a controversial figure in the street art community since 2014, when he described "rapey behavior" he had done during a podcast.

In the 2014 recording, Choe told his co-host about masturbating during a massage, and then touching the masseuse's butt without her permission before grabbing her hands and placing them on his erect penis, according to a transcript of the podcast from BuzzFeed News.

Choe later said that the stories he told on the podcast weren't factual or "a representation of my reality" and denied raping anyone.

Choe's mural, which was completed on June 4, was tagged and vandalized multiple times before it was painted over. The wall was completely covered in white paint about a week after Choe's mural went up. Although neither Choe nor Goldman's CEO confirmed who had painted over the mural, both referenced his past statements in discussing the mural's erasure.

"We have heard the voices of those of you who have protested our selection of David Choe for the Bowery wall because of his past statements about women," CEO Jessica Goldman Srebnick wrote after Choe's mural was taken down. "It is never acceptable to objectify women or to joke about rape. Mr. Choe has now spoken for himself and publicly apologized for his past behavior and the dark words he put into the world. We commend him for publicly acknowledging what he privately shared with us before we selected him. We believe his sincerity."

"In a broader sense, your voices have prompted us to question whether we should evaluate the character of the artists with whom we work, and automatically disqualify from consideration those who have behaved inappropriately," she continued.

The new mural by Maciver is part of a high-profile partnership between Goldman and Instagram that they're calling the #KindComments Initiative, which is working to "share the message of kindness through art," according to a joint statement from the companies. There will be a total of ten #KindComments murals going up throughout the world, starting with the Houston Bowery Wall.

Maciver's mural will be on the Houston Bowery Wall from Monday through January, Goldman Properties said.

Image credit: Ciara McCarthy / Patch