NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Explorers affiliated with the National Geographic Society have a long history of surmounting stone in places like Mount Everest. But the 130-year-old organization has decided that more than 1 million pounds of artfully placed granite are in the way of plans to expand its headquarters in Washington.

The boulders, part of a sculpture called “Marabar,” by Elyn Zimmerman, were installed by the society almost four decades ago in an outdoor plaza at its four-building campus.

The society’s board had once stood and applauded when plans for “Marabar” were unveiled, according to David Childs, the architect who chose Zimmerman, then a young artist early in what would become a celebrated career.

But now, to make room for a new entrance pavilion and a rentable rooftop garden, National Geographic plans on dismantling the sculpture after Zimmerman was unable to find a new home for it.

The decision, which is subject to review by the District of Columbia’s Historical Preservation Commission, has drawn more than two dozen letters of complaint from architects, art critics, museum leaders and others who say they fear the loss of an important work. The stone-and-water installation, named after the fictional caves in E.M. Forster’s novel “A Passage to India,” led to years of significant commissions in which Zimmerman, now 74, integrated hunks of jagged granite, polished stone and placid pools.

“The Zimmerman piece is the jewel in the setting,” said Charles A. Birnbaum, the president and founder of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group. “The way that National Geographic wants to reimagine its campus is reasonable, but it needn’t come at the expense of ‘Marabar.’”

Officials of National Geographic declined to be interviewed but they have defended their decision in letters to Birnbaum and Zimmerman, asserting that the society had promised to pay to have the boulders removed and relocated in a “respectful and appropriate manner.”

“In order to continue to carry out our mission in this day and age, it is necessary for us to reorganize the circulation pattern both to and through our buildings,” the society said in a letter last month to Birnbaum.

This is far from the first time that building plans have jeopardized a respected work of art or architecture. The Museum of Modern Art, for example, drew criticism for tearing down the critically hailed former home of the Folk Art Museum in Manhattan in 2014 to make room for a 10,000-square-foot gallery expansion.

The preservation board has jurisdiction because the National Geographic campus, six blocks north of the White House, is partly in a historic district. Last summer the board voted unanimously to grant “conceptual approval” to the expansion redesign.

“This is much more inviting and distinctive,” Sandra Jowers-Barber, a history professor who serves on the preservation board, said of the redesigned entrance plaza during a hearing in August.

Birnbaum has asked the preservation board to reconsider that decision, arguing that the society had not done enough to make plain that it was removing “Marabar.” The society has denied that, indicating its intentions were clearly signaled by the fact that the sculpture did not appear in any of the renderings it submitted of the proposed new plaza.

At a meeting last week, the board chairwoman, Marnique Heath, acknowledged that the board has received objections to National Geographic’s plan and said the board “will address the concerns” at its meeting later this month.

Steve Callcott, a preservation officer for the district who speaks for the board, said that, at the time of the August vote, members had not understood that the society intended to remove the sculpture.

Zimmerman’s installations can be found in private collections and public settings around the world, including Albert Capsouto Park in Manhattan. She designed the memorial to victims of the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center, which was later destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.

Zimmerman said she objects to the plan to remove her work. In 2017, when she was first told about the proposal, she said she did not take it seriously at first because so much work had gone into preparing the site for its installation. The plaza infrastructure below the pool and boulders was engineered to support “Marabar,” she said, and district officials had to reinforce sewer lines before trucks could drive over them to deliver the granite in 1984.

She said she tried one option as a possible new home for “Marabar” but Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey, could not accommodate the pool and hydroelectric system required to recreate the riverlike flow of water between “Marabar’s” rocks.

She also expressed skepticism that the huge granite boulders she had found at quarries in Minnesota and South Dakota four decades ago could be removed intact.

“The largest of those boulders weighs a quarter of a million pounds,” she said. “They’re going to have to dynamite the thing out of there. “

National Geographic has given no indication that it intends to use dynamite, or other explosives, in the process of removing the stones.

Review board members have already expressed concern that the project not damage the buildings on National Geographic’s campus and asked the project architect to carefully monitor their integrity during construction.

The property includes two protected early-20th-century buildings. A third building, a 1981 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill tiered structure, was designed by Childs, the architect who commissioned “Marabar.” The fourth is a 10-story office building, completed in 1963 and designed by Edward Durell Stone, the architect whose work includes the Kennedy Center in Washington.

In 2017, local preservationists applied to have the Stone building, which currently houses National Geographic’s museum as well as the Australian Embassy, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

No building permits are to be issued for the campus renovation project until the issue regarding the Stone building has been resolved, Callcott said.

Olga Viso, a curator and consultant who formerly led the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, said she understands National Geographic’s desire to unify a campus featuring structures built 80 years apart, and to create more gathering space in the process.

At the Walker, Viso oversaw an expansion that led the museum to alter, move or remove several beloved pieces of public art, most notably an installation created by Frank Gehry for a 1986 retrospective, “Standing Glass Fish.”

Dialogue with Gehry began several years in advance, Viso said, and they ultimately found a new indoor home for “Glass Fish” at the University of Minnesota.

“Functions change and expansions happen,” Viso said. “When those changes happen, you need to both honor and reimagine.”

Among the letters sent to the preservation board in recent weeks recommending it reconsider the National Geographic plan was one from Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

“I know that destruction is not the intent of National Geographic,” Weinberg wrote, “I do however ask that they consider other options. Not only do I believe that it would be the right thing — for Zimmerman and art history — but it would be an important signal and reaffirmation of National Geographic’s own values as a leading organization committed to protecting the great wonders of the world, be they woman-made or natural.”

© 2020 The New York Times Company