Exclusive | Nutty professor who held machete to Post reporter's neck tapped by NYC for $407K art installation: 'Piece of junk'

"The unhinged ex-CUNY professor who savagely held a machete to the neck of a New York Post reporter now has a permanent, taxpayer-funded art installation in the Bronx. The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs ignored Shellyne Rodriguez's infamous past by green-lighting a $407,000 budget for her 23-foot-tall brick, steel and terracotta Marxist monstrosity called "Phoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx.""

"The permanent work, commissioned by the city through the Percent for Art program, is sandwiched in a thicket of residential buildings and hailed as a testament to the borough's resiliency after the arson spree during the tumultuous 1970s. The monument- which already has cracks along its foundation - is adorned with images of the phoenix, a mythological symbol of rebirth; a series of piercing eyes; four clenched fists signifying black power/socialist solidarity, and the home borough letters "B" and "X.""

"On top of the structure is an ascending black ladder without an end. "If abolition is not solely about what we dismantle, but also about what we build in its stead, then what monuments or points of gathering will we, the collective body of the dispossessed who make life on the periphery of empire, make for ourselves as stewards of our own histories and futures," she told Hyperallergic in November."

Shellyne Rodriguez, a former CUNY professor who previously held a machete to a New York Post reporter and accepted a plea deal for the assault, received a permanent public monument in the Bronx funded with $407,000. The 23-foot-tall brick, steel and terracotta installation, titled Phoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx, was commissioned through the Percent for Art program as part of a $62.5 million reconstruction of the Grand Concourse. The monument features phoenix imagery, piercing eyes, four clenched fists, the letters B and X, an ascending black ladder, and shows cracks along its foundation. Rodriguez received $81,400 from the commission.

Read at New York Post