Famed British street artist Banksy went up with a new piece Sunday after the New York Times rejected an op-ed he wrote criticizing the new World Trade Center tower’s design.
Banksy’s latest graffiti message, located in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, read “This site contains blocked messages.” The anonymous artist wrote on his website that “Today’s piece was going to be an op-ed column in the New York Times. But they declined to publish what I supplied. Which was this…”
A mock-up of a Times op-ed complete with the newspaper’s motto and signature font followed. Banksy called One World Trade Center an “eyesore,” and wrote that its design amounted to a proclamation that “the terrorists won.”
“We couldn’t agree on either the piece or the art, so we did reject it,” New York Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told the New York Post. “What he has posted on his site is not exactly the same as what he submitted.”
Earlier this month, Banksy unveiled a piece in Tribeca, the neighborhood where the Twin Towers once stood, depicting the towers with an orange daisy placed over the location where the first plane hit in the attack.
Photo by TPM’s Nick R. Martin
Correction: This post has been updated to reflect that the World Trade Center tower is officially referred to as One World Trade Center, not the Freedom Tower.
