The Wall Street Journal - USA (2020-12-07)

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ** Monday, December 7, 2020 |A10A

‘NHKS4220’ at Artechouse is a hologram-style projection of Edward Hopper’s famed ‘Nighthawks,’ updated for the pandemic era.

ARTECHOUSE

coming to help during the

spring. That assistance might

not be available as other states

are now surging, he said.

“You can have an unlimited

number of beds and equip-

ment, but if you don’t have the

staff, it can break you,” Dr.

Woods said.

About 8,200 Covid-19 pa-

tients were hospitalized during

the spring peak, according to

the New Jersey Hospital Asso-

ciation. About 13,400 deaths

were attributed to the pan-

demic by the end of May, which

at the time was the highest

death toll of any state in the

nation other than New York.

New York health-care execu-

tives, public officials and epi-

demiologists have repeatedly

said they don’t believe that the

winter months will be a repeat

of the spring, as long as people

adhere to mask wearing, social

distancing and other public-

health recommendations.

Using a mathematical model

that he helped to develop, Na-

thaniel Hupert, co-director of

the Cornell Institute for Disease

and Disaster Preparedness at

Weill Cornell Medicine in Man-

hattan, said it isn’t forecasting

the type of surge New York City

hospitals saw in the spring.

That doesn’t mean it is im-

possible, he cautioned, but

with some 20% of city resi-

dents showing antibodies to

the disease—which most stud-

ies suggest is effective and du-

rable—there isn’t the “dry kin-

dling to permit this to catch

fire in the way it did in the

spring,” he said.

Those painful spring

months gave the medical staff

at New York and New Jersey

hospitals new expertise in

treating the disease, hospital

executives said, while the sum-

mer lull in patients allowed

time to plan for the winter.

In New York, hospitals de-

veloped new systems over the

GREATER NEW YORK

tested positive for the virus,

for a statewide positivity rate

of 4.71%, one of the lowest in

the U.S.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said

Friday about 60% of the state’s

ICU beds were filled, though

primarily with patients who

don’t have Covid-19.

Hospitalizations are ex-

pected to increase in the com-

ing weeks as the number of in-

fections in New Jersey

continues setting new records.

New Jersey reported 5,

new cases Friday, the highest

daily figure for the state since

the start of the pandemic.

“We have the PPE, we have

the staff, we have staff backup,

we have physicians poised to

do what they need to do, we

have the medications in stock,

we have ventilators,” said John

Bonamo, chief medical and

quality officer for RWJBarna-

bas Health, which includes 11

acute-care hospitals in New

Jersey. “We have a much bet-

ter idea of what we are dealing

with and how to deal with it.”

Despite advancements, staff-

ing remains a top concern for

some New York and New Jer-

sey hospitals heading into the

winter. New Jersey hospitals

are currently well staffed, said

Cathleen Bennett, chief execu-

tive of the New Jersey Hospital

Association.

Tucker Woods, chief medi-

cal officer at CarePoint Health-

Christ Hospital, said New Jer-

sey hospitals benefited from

out-of-state medical experts

summer to more easily bal-

ance the load of patients

across hospital systems and, if

needed, between hospital sys-

tems in a region.

The idea, said Ken Raske,

president of the Greater New

York Hospital Association, a

trade group, is to transfer pa-

tients between the city’s hot

and cold spots. In addition, an

intra-hospital data tool called

Sit Stat has been refined by the

group so that hospitals and city

emergency response have bet-

ter awareness of each hospital’s

capacity and can plan ahead.

“I’m very confident that we

are going to be adequately

prepared for whatever comes

our way,” said Mr. Raske.

Patients are, on average,

younger and stay in the hospi-

tal fewer days, hospital execu-

tives say. Fewer patients are

going to the ICU. Mr. Cuomo

said the state’s death rate of

hospitalized Covid-19 patients

has now dropped to 8% from a

high of 23% in March and April.

Daniel Varga, chief physi-

cian executive of Hackensack

Meridian Health, which oper-

ates 17 hospitals, said he ex-

pects a lower mortality rate in

the coming weeks compared

with the spring as long as the

young and healthy continue to

make up a large percentage of

hospitalized patients.

“If we don’t manage it well

from a public-health stand-

point, we always run the risk

of overwhelming the health-

care system,” Dr. Varga said.

New Jersey and New York
hospitals are girding for a win-
ter blitz of Covid-19 patients
but say they are more prepared
and are optimistic the mortal-
ity rate will be lower than in
the brutal spring months.
Hospitals have stockpiled
personal protective equip-
ment, or PPE, secured an ade-
quate supply of ventilators
and are prepared to expand
their bed capacity. During the
first wave of the coronavirus
pandemic, they scrambled to
add beds and staff, tracked
down ventilators and scoured
the globe to buy PPE.
There were 3,315 people
hospitalized in New Jersey
with Covid-19 or suspected of
having the disease as of Fri-
day, according to the state De-
partment of Health. Two-
thirds of acute- and intensive-
care unit beds were occupied
by Covid-19 and other pa-
tients, according to the New
Jersey Hospital Association.
Across the river in New
York, more than 4,400 people
were hospitalized for Covid-19,
according to data released
Sunday by the governor’s of-
fice. Roughly 9,700 people

BYJOSEPHDEAVILA
ANDMELANIEGRAYCEWEST

Hospitals Heed Lessons From Grim Spring

Officials say they

stockpiled equipment

for winter surge, expect

lower mortality rate

Staff at Hackensack University Medical Center, like other area hospitals, loaded up on PPE.

HACKENSACK MERIDIAN HEALTH

STATE STREET|By Jimmy Vielkind

Fight for Central New York House Seat Drags On in Court

The re-
match be-
tween Repub-
lican Claudia
Tenney and
U.S. Rep. An-
thony Brindisi will slog on in
a central New York courtroom
this week as the Democratic
incumbent urges a judge to
open more ballots, while Ms.
Tenney asks to be certified as
the winner—by 12 votes.
Ms. Tenney was ahead by
28,000 votes when in-person
voting ended on Nov. 3, but
Mr. Brindisi gained consider-
able ground as election offi-
cials in the eight-county dis-
trict counted an
unprecedented number of
paper absentee ballots.
In the days before Thanks-
giving, Mr. Brindisi was ahead
by 13 votes. Then one of the
counties rechecked its math,
and Ms. Tenney recaptured
the lead. Last week, nearly a
month after Election Day, of-
ficials in rural Chenango
County said they had found

55 new unopened ballots.

The contest for New

York’s 22nd District—one of

just two in the nation where

no winner has been de-

clared—might take addi-

tional weeks to resolve, and

it is possible that State Su-

preme Court Justice Scott

DelConte could order a full

recount, which neither can-

didate is seeking.

Already, the election has

highlighted deficiencies in

New York’s electoral proce-

dures and let Ms. Tenney ad-

vance conservative claims

about voting irregularities.

The Republican won a seat

in the House in 2016 but lost

a re-election bid to Mr. Brin-

disi in 2018.

In appearances on cable

television in recent weeks,

Ms. Tenney said changes to

state law that relaxed the re-

quirements to vote by absen-

tee ballot created a bad situ-

ation.

“It’s been an administra-

tive nightmare,” she said

Thursday on Fox News’

“Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “I

think it’s hard to say specifi-

cally if there was deliberate

fraud—but there is definitely

fraud that could happen be-

cause of this just untenable

situation for these boards.”

Researchers have found

instances of absentee voter

fraud, but studies show it

isn’t widespread. Rich Az-

zopardi, a senior adviser to

Democratic Gov. Andrew

Cuomo, defended the state’s

new election protocols. He

said the state also offered

county boards extra person-

nel to count ballots.

“I know her entire career

was fueled by bear-hugging

nutty Trumpian conspiracy

theories, but let’s try some

facts for a change,” Mr. Az-

zopardi said.

Officials in each of the dis-

trict’s eight counties opened

more than 60,000 absentee

and affidavit ballots, which

are often cast by people who

don’t appear in voter rolls at

their poll site. Representa-

tives from both campaigns

watched the counting, and

explicit procedures for deter-

mining ballot validity and

lodging objections were set

out in a court order.

But court filings by law-

yers for both candidates al-

lege instances where the pro-

cedures weren’t followed.

Absentee ballots were to be

opened and counted even if

one of the campaigns ob-

jected, but in some cases of-

ficials didn’t record which

candidate received the vote

or whether it had been

counted, the court filings say.

In Oneida County, officials

made notations on sticky

notes rather than directly on

the envelope enclosing the

ballot, they said last month

during a hearing. Some of

the notes then fell off. The

Brindisi campaign is asking

to open more than 400 affi-

davit ballots that were inval-

idated by that county’s elec-

tion commissioners, as well

as the 55 ballots found by of-

ficials in Chenango County.

Those ballots are part of a

pool of roughly 1,500—nei-

ther campaign has an exact

figure—disputed votes sitting

before Justice DelConte. Mr.

Brindisi’s campaign asked

him to order election offi-

cials to fix their record-keep-

ing errors and let the court

determine whether individual

ballots should be opened.

“The margin in this race is

incredibly close and contin-

ues to change,” said Brindisi

campaign spokesman Luke

Jackson. “The integrity of

the election and maintaining

a count that ensures the vot-

ers of this district are heard

is of the utmost importance.

As this process continues to

play out, we are hopeful that

once the counting process is

completed, Anthony will be

declared the winner.”

Ms. Tenney’s lawyers said

in court papers that the

Brindisi campaign should

have ensured procedures

were followed in recording

its objections and that it will

be almost impossible to de-

termine whether certain bal-

lots have already been

counted. They also said fur-

ther counting poses a public-

health risk, and questioned

the provenance of the 55

Chenango County ballots.

“The late discovery of

these affidavit ballots raises

serious questions about their

chain of custody, as well as

the Respondent county

Board of Elections’ ballot ac-

countability practices,” the

Tenney campaign said.

[email protected]

The contest in the

22nd District could

take additional

weeks to resolve.

These days, when visitors
enter Artechouse, the exhibi-
tion space in Manhattan’s
Chelsea Market devoted to
artwork driven by technology,
they will immediately encoun-
ter an eerily familiar scene.
It is a diner or perhaps bar,
with a man behind the counter
and a few patrons seemingly
lost in their own worlds. As
real as it might seem at first
glance, it is a hologram-style
projection of Edward Hopper’s
“Nighthawks,” updated for the
21st century.
The recently unveiled instal-
lation is “NHKS4220”—“42” re-
fers to 1942, when Hopper cre-
ated his now iconic painting,
and “20” to the present year—
and it was commissioned by
Artechouse from the Noiland
Collective, a company based in
Austin, Texas, that specializes
in such tech-minded work.
The inspiration for the
piece is directly tied to the
coronavirus pandemic. Artec-
house, which was shut for sev-
eral months because of New
York state safety-related man-
dates, had to rethink how it
was going to use its bar space
upon reopening, knowing that
it would be problematic to
serve cocktails because of pan-
demic protocols.

Artechouse co-founder

Sandro Kereselidze thought of

the idea of a bar or restaurant

in digital form—not an actual

place to eat or drink, but an

artistic homage to one almost

as a reminder of what such es-

tablishments mean to our so-

cial collective. In turn, the Noi-

land Collective team thought a

homage to “Nighthawks”

would be the perfect approach.

Sven Ortel, a member of the

Noiland Collective who worked

on the project, said “Night-

hawks” carries special mean-

ing, not only because of its fa-

miliarity, but because it is a

work created during the height

of World War II, a period of

anxiety and unrest. And that is

a natural parallel to the pan-

demic era of today, he said.

Also of note to Mr. Ortel:

The fact that Hopper, who died

in 1967, was said to have been

inspired to create “Nighthawks”

based on a place or setting in

his Greenwich Village neighbor-

hood. In other words, a location

likely just blocks from Artec-

house’s New York home.

“It really was the icing on

the cake,” said Mr. Ortel of the

geographic link.

But “NHKS4220” isn’t

“Nighthawks” per se. This is

the painting as cinematic nar-

rative, rendered with those ho-

logram-style projections that

move about (actors were used

to create the images). The idea

is to build a story of sorts, al-

beit without dialogue, leaving

the viewer to fill in the blanks.

“I’ve always been fascinated

with motion pictures,” said

Mr. Kereselidze, who also runs

Artechouse spaces in Washing-

ton, D.C., and Miami.

The story is also not con-

fined to the world of 1942. At

some point, the scene in

“NHKS4220” changes to the

present day. The familiar cof-

fee urns from Hopper’s paint-

ing remain but everything else

is seemingly 2020, with the

people in contemporary cloth-

ing. The idea is to connect past

and present, said Mr. Ortel.

“NHKS4220” is hardly the

first homage to Hopper’s

painting, which is owned by

the Art Institute of Chicago

and remains on display there.

(The work is in the public do-

main, however, so Artechouse

didn’t need permission for its

exhibition.) Over the years, the

painting has been re-created in

countless ways, be it in a scene

from a movie or a cartoon in

the New Yorker magazine.

Part of the enduring fasci-

nation, says Sarah Kelly Oehler,

chair and curator of American

art at the Art Institute of Chi-

cago, is due to the brilliance of

Hopper’s composition. She

notes how he rendered a world

of the diner in such crystalline

fashion with just a few figures

and elements and not even the

need for a dessert case.

But another part is that the

world of “Nighthawks” is an

enigmatic one, with viewers

never certain as to what the

people portrayed in it are

thinking or what the painting

as a whole is conveying, Ms.

Oehler says. That allows for

reinterpretations of all kinds.

So, what would Hopper

think of “Nighthawks” done in

such tech-minded, contempo-

rary fashion? Ms. Oehler notes

the artist’s reputation for being

a curmudgeon and isn’t quite

sure he would play along. “I’d

suspect he would have raised

his eyebrows at this,” she said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ortel sees

the possibility of bringing

more famous paintings to life.

“I do think it opens up a whole

world of possibilities,” he said.

BYCHARLESPASSY

Hopper Painting

Gets a Makeover

For 21st Century

NY

wsj_ 20201207 _a 010 p 2 jw 342000 2 a 010 a 0 1 ____ns 2020 .crop.pdf 1 07 - Dec- 20 07 : 07 : 20