AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS’S NEW YORK DIRECTOR ABRUPTLY RESIGNS

The executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Fredric M. Bell, has abruptly resigned his post, reports Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times.

Appointed executive director in June 2001, Bell was crucial to the establishment of the institute’s Center for Architecture at 536 LaGuardia Place in Manhattan. He was a high-profile advocate at times: Along with Nina Libeskind, he proposed a new home for New York’s Museum of Modern Art in Long Island City, so that the institution wouldn’t raze the former Folk Art Museum building in Manhattan to make way for a new space.