Weeping Willow: A Former Student Searches for Answers
Ben Cuomo opened his senior project installation, the Willow Room, in April. By June, it had disappeared.
By Mike Ditota
Ben Cuomo sat on a stone bench in a small clearing behind the Olde apartments. The surrounding cluster of pine trees cast a calming shade over the area while a gentle breeze rustled their branches. The bench weighed roughly 300 pounds, according to Cuomo, who installed it. Along with a wooden signpost a few feet away, it was the only remnant of his public art installation and senior project, the Willow Room.
“It was inspired by something I’d want at Purchase,” Cuomo said of the project. “My parents are Buddhist, so I feel like I’ve been raised with the mentality of how important peace is.”
Awarded a public art grant from the Purchase Student Government Association (PSGA) in December of last year, Cuomo sought to create a space for community and meditation. He and several friends worked together for over four months to design and construct the space. The grand opening was held on April 19, featuring a performance by Cuomo on saxophone. By early June, everything was gone.
“Good evening,” an Instagram post shared by Cuomo begins. “I am incredibly devastated to share the news that the Willow Room has been taken down without mine or Purchase’s permission.”
Along with the remaining signpost and bench, Cuomo found one of the structure’s support stakes discarded in a nearby dumpster. The sign, which had been handmade and nailed into the post, was pried out and left on the ground.
“My name was on it and I’m not that hard to track down,” Cuomo said. “Part of the contract was that they had to let me know before they deinstalled.”
The contract Cuomo refers to is the PSGA’s Public Arts Agreement signed between himself and last year’s PSGA’s Coordinator of Public Art, Connor Hoffstatter. Section seven of the contract reads, “If the artwork is deinstalled, the artist will be contacted and it will be up to them to collect it and do with it what they wish.”
Cuomo claims he received no communication before or after the removal, having been notified by a friend who was living on campus over summer break. He contacted on-campus organizations including the PSGA, maintenance department, University Police (UPD), and Future Stars, a summer camp that uses Purchase facilities.
UPD assigned detective Justin Thompson to the case. His conclusion, relayed by Cuomo, was that the campus maintenance crew had mistakenly removed the structure. Thompson believed that weather damage may have come into play, given the storms that swept through the area in the weeks following graduation.
“I was supposed to have this whole meeting with the president,” Cuomo said. “The police report was made, then Steiper cancelled the meeting.” According to him, the report “just said the weather did it.”
Octavio DaEira, Purchase’s Assistant Director of Facilities Management, had a similar hypothesis. Via phone call, he discussed how the campus was struck by severe storms in the weeks following graduation. “My grounds crew was picking up debris from everywhere,” he said. The Great Lawn and athletics fields were covered in garbage and brush strewn about by the strong winds.
He added that the Willow Room was “not the most secure thing in the world” and was likely “blown to shit by the storm.”
DaEira said that all of the grounds crew were aware of the exhibit and knew not to interact with it. It was only after cleaning campus that they realized parts of the Willow Room may have been mixed in with other debris.
Despite these claims from the maintenance crew, the remnants of the project raise further questions. When installing the Room, Cuomo and his friends planted at least four metal stakes, digging down about two feet and filling the holes with cement. While the top of the structure disappeared over the summer, the cement and bottom portions of the stakes were found still buried on site this month. Each stake appeared to have been cut several inches below ground level and discarded, including the one Cuomo found in the nearby dumpster.
Purchase alumni Toriana Sauro, who was employed by Cuomo to build the Willow Room’s frame, said that they did not have enough time to make the structure as weatherproof as possible. Despite this, they said there was “no way” that weather alone could have removed the stakes.
DaEira said that the grounds crew does not regularly have access to the type of saw needed to make such a cut and would have simply used a backhoe if they wanted to remove them. He also said the facilities metal department did not loan out any such tools during the time frame that the room vanished.
Future Stars is a youth summer camp that uses the campus starting in mid-June. James Oates, the Assistant Site Director, noticed the installation during setup, two to three weeks before the start of camp. The Willow Room disappeared during the break between their setup and camp beginning for the summer.
“We do have one of our arrival and dismissal areas, and one of them is in that turning circle there (referring to the East Four lot),” Oates said. “I remember thinking ‘if that’s going to be there, I wonder how it’s going to go with our kids there as well’, but then it came down.” Similarly to the maintenance crew, Future Stars does not have regular access to a tool capable of cutting the stakes.
As for Cuomo, he’s begun to move on. With the experience gained from the Willow Room’s construction, the concept is gaining new life in his current projects. He is continuing to find new ways to blend his love for music and nature.
“My creative outlet is sound art stuff like this,” he said. “My next project is going to kind of be like this but a smaller version.”
The bench will stick around for the foreseeable future. Immune to the wind and rain that swept away most of its surrounding structure, it remains a calm spot for reflection. Though the installation no longer exists as Cuomo intended, the spirit of the space remains.
“To me it was like my Purchase legacy in a way,” he said. “I was just so happy that I got the opportunity to have my own little place on campus.”
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