How Things Went Wrong for the New York-Dublin ‘Portal’

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at why a live outdoor video link between Manhattan and Dublin was turned off. We’ll also find out why Mayor Eric Adams defended calling migrants “excellent swimmers.”

Credit…Seth Wenig/Associated Press

The Portal, a large, round art installation designed to livestream video between the Flatiron district in Manhattan and a similar sculpture in the center of Dublin, would “redefine the boundaries of artistic expression and connectivity,” its promoters said when they unveiled it last week.

How it redefined those boundaries became a problem after videos on social media showed an OnlyFans model lifting her shirt in New York and people in Dublin displaying swastikas and images of the World Trade Center burning on Sept. 11, 2001.

The video feed between the two cities was shut down on Tuesday — temporarily, officials in New York and Dublin said. How soon the link might go on again remained an open question on Wednesday.

“We’re hoping to be up, hopefully, for the weekend,” said James Mettham, the president of the Flatiron NoMad Partnership, the nonprofit business group that coordinated the installation of the Portal in New York.