Public Works

The recent exhibitions on Robert Moses at the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum of Art, and Columbia University have revived old debates about Robert Moses, most of which have boiled down to the question: when all is said and done, was he good or bad? When I visited the exhibitions, trying to figure out my own answer, I remembered my father’s favorite saying (lifted from Oedipus Rex): “Would you condemn me for that which made me great?"