MANHATTAN — Restaurant Florent is no more, but the owner of the beloved Meatpacking District eatery will soon be honored nearby.
A head-to-toe mold of restaurateur, community activist and sometimes-drag queen Florent Morellet will be created on the High Line in late July, park managers announced Tuesday.
Morellet, who was the subject of the 2010 documentary "Florent: Queen of the Meat Market," won more than 1,500 votes from the public to be rendered in a highly realistic sculpture by artist John Ahearn, beating out writer and satirist Dorothy Parker, Postmasters Gallery owner Magda Sawon and two other finalists.
Morellet — an artist and cartographer who serves on Community Board 2 — said in a brief interview Tuesday that he was thrilled to be selected.
"It's an honor. I'm very, very happy about it," he said.
The subject and sculptor are a natural match, High Line Art curator Cecilia Alemani said.
“Both Florent Morellet and John Ahearn share a strong faith in the power of art, culture and creativity to bring people together and transform our cities with public spaces enjoyed by people from diverse communities,” Alemani said in a statement.
Starting in 1985, Morellet ran Restaurant Florent, a 24-hour French diner where celebrities including Keith Haring, Amy Winehouse and Calvin Klein were regularly spotted. The 69 Gansevoort St. restaurant served as a meeting place of LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS activists, and it has been credited with helping transform its then-gritty neighborhood into a destination.
Restaurant Florent closed in spring 2008 after losing its lease.
The sculpture of Morellet will be part of "Busted," a group exhibition of nine memorials and busts on view on the elevated freight rail line-turned-park. It will be displayed from September 2013 through April 2014. The date the sculpture will be made has not yet been set.
The full-body casting process takes a minimum of two hours, during which the subject breathes through straws stuck up his or her nose, Ahearn told the website Blouin ArtInfo.