NYC NOW - May 30, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Demand for New York City's free summer school program surpasses its current capacity, hazy skies may get in the way of your Manhattanhenge viewing tonight at 8:12, and the Museum of Art and Design opens a new* exhibit dedicated to pop star Taylor Swift. In other museum news, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the biggest museums in the world. But critics say it has a big problem: it owns hundreds of works that, at some point in history, were looted. As WNYC’s Arun Venugopal reports, the museum is now trying to address the issue. And finally, a Greenpoint coffee shop called Botbar is causing controversy with locals for using robots in replacement of human labor. WNYC’s David Furst sits with Eater NY reporter Luke Fortney who has been covering the story.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, May 30th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. On WNYC, demand for New York City's free summer school program has far outstripped supply. WNMIC's Jessica Gould, explains. Officials say 95,000 children have been accepted to New York City's free summer school program, but some 45,000 students were not. The free program called Summer Rising kicked off two years ago to address pandemic learning loss. It includes a mix of academics and activities for elementary and middle school students.

Students in shelters and children with disabilities got priority for seats. Some more slots will be available to children who teachers say need extra help. The future of summarizing beyond this year is unclear. Federal stimulus money has paid for the program, is running out as Mayor Eric Adams looks for budget cuts across city agencies. Hey, these guys may get in the way of your Manhattan Hinge viewing tonight at 812. Northeast winds are blowing smoke from Canada wildfires once again. The National Weather Service says the smoke could lead to poor air quality,

and the elderly, small children, and people with troubled breathing should take extra precautions. Taylor Swift's whirlwind era store has come and gone through an area, but the Museum of Art and Design on Columbus Circle has just opened a new exhibit called Taylor Swift Storyteller through September 4th. It walks through how one of the world's biggest pop stars uses props to further the narratives in her songs. Tickets for the exhibit cost $25 and are timed slots.

67 and sunny now, sunny and 73 for a high today. New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the biggest museums in the world, but critics say it has a big problem. It owns hundreds of works that at some point in history were looted. As W&MIC-Zeroon-Ventanygo-Paul reports, the museum is now trying to address that issue. The Mets collection is enormous. It contains one and a half million works of art from around the world spanning millennia. But reporting from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in March

revealed at least a thousand of the museum's works are linked to traffickers who illegally obtained them abroad, then covered their tracks using forged documents. The museum's director, Max Holline, acknowledges the Met needs to get better at spotting looted works and says they're hiring four experts in provenance research to help. And we want to make sure that we can act on it and react on it swiftly and diligently. That pressure to act is largely coming from the international art community and law enforcement. In the last year, year or so, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office says it seized more than 60 items from the Met that it determined were stolen. In March, the museum says it returned 16 trafficked artworks

to India, and in 2019 it returned a gold coffin to Egypt after learning it was looted in 2011. Again, Max Holline. Basically, the documentation that we have been supplied by the sellers was fraudulent and basically a fake. Some scholars say the changes are long overdue. Aaron Thomas, Thompson is a professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I'm cautiously optimistic. So you could say the Met is launching a new initiative, or you could say that the Met is scrambling to catch up to what many other major American museums have already realized, that you have to look into how the objects you have got to you.

Over the years, Thompson has used Twitter to shame the Med into parting with works from developing nations. She says a big part of the problem is demographics. The museum world is extremely white and wealthy and had to be pushed to take the problem of trafficking seriously. Objects left their cultures of origin through violence, through colonial extraction, through theft, through smuggling, and a lot of communities around the world are today saying, hey, we want our stuff back. In June, the museum will convene the first in a series of public events, exploring how objects got into the Met and whether or not they should be there. Arun Van deGal Paul, WNYC News.

On WNYC, I'm David First. The Robot Barista. No, this wasn't the first sign of the rise of the machines in the Terminator films, but a very real phenomenon at a Greenpoint coffee shop. Imagine a white, egg-shaped creature with arms on the countertop, and you get coffee from it. eater New York's Luke Fortney has been reporting on Bot Bar Coffee and joins us. Now, hey, Luke. Hey, David. Thanks for having me. The place is called Bot Bar Coffee. Why is a robot serving coffee in Greenpoint? Is this an experiment?

At this point, it's a little hard to tell. We first spotted this coffee shop a couple weeks ago. They put up a small sign in a vacated restaurant space with their branding. And on the counter, if you look through the window, you could see. see the egg-shaped creature sitting there. But this did open for business last weekend. Right. The coffee shop opened briefly. It seemed to be a trial run to see if they could get the robot to cooperate. And it's been open on and off since then. But it looks like an opening is upon us imminently.

The opening is upon us. This is very like foreboding language you're using it and talking about whether the robot is going to cooperate. What's going on here? So I first encountered a robot like this actually in the Sanford, Francisco airport. It's a robotic arm that you command via a touchscreen kiosk and it makes your drinks for you. That's the idea at least. So the company claims that this robot can make as many as 50 drinks an hour. And that's not just cold brew. That's cappuccinos, iced americano,

anything with oat milk in it. This is really like a full replacement for a human employee. There have to be humans working in the store as well, right, to keep it supplies. with all of the ingredients. That's right. On opening day, my coworker Emma Orlo was there, and the robot was asking for a coffee refill. Chanting is maybe a more accurate way to describe it, in a robotic voice.

How have customers reacted? So the response has been pretty unanimous. We don't want this in Greenpoint. We posted the story about this, and we had dozens of commenters who just essentially said this. same thing. Greenpoint is a very neighborhoody neighborhood with a lot of longstanding communities. And opening a coffee shop run by a two-armed egg-shaped robot kind of goes against those values.

We've seen some business owners in the community send out messages saying this is not something we want. And I've heard a few people jokingly say that they thought about protesting it. There are coffee shops that use similar machines that do not use humans, which raises some interesting questions if, say, you or I walk in and spill a cold brew who's going to clean up that mess. But here there are going to be a couple of workers running around when you step foot inside. I'd be a little afraid, I think, to spill a drink in front of this robot. You and I both. Standing there at the touchscreen, you're really not too far out of its clamp range. They really are reaching around. And in between drink orders, some of these machines at other stores are even programmed

to have human elements to them. You know, they'll wave at customers or do a little dance. The companies that make these robots claim that they're responding to what some perceive to be issues in the hospitality industry right now, like rising hourly pay,

employee retention, labor shortages, and really are offering the robots as a way to replace human labor. And they're pretty explicit about this. The website for Botbar, for example, uses phrases like no breaks needed and never takes a sick day in its promotional materials. That sounds like a sales pitch to business owners. Right. I think that is an element of it here. But my honest view of this is that I think most restaurants using these machines are doing so as a

sort of promotional tool, something that people might post on Instagram or recirculate online. Or perhaps talk about on the radio. Yep, exactly. Does the robot ask for tips. You know, I actually don't know the answer to that, David. That is an incredible question, though. I was wondering if this was a sneaky way for customers to perhaps avoid tipping baristas. That is a very, very good question. I know this has been another hot ticket debate in the city right now about the touchscreen

kiosks that ask you for your tip at the end. Though I do think everyone should be tipped for coffee, even if it's just a simple cold brew. I know that some people have been irked by this recently. So good question. All right. We'll have to see how this develops. Luke Fortney with Ider, New York. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More this evening.