Please Note: The exhibition and commissioned gardens have been exhibited in summer/fall 2005. For more information, please visit www.queensmuseum.org/exhibitions/downthegarden.htm. Queens Museum to Commission Five Artists’ Gardens The Queens Museum of Art announces an open competition for the commission of five artists’ gardens to be created for the exhibition Down the Garden Path: Artists Gardens since 1960, opening Summer 2004. An historical exhibition, based on the work of international artists from the 1960s-1990s, it will take place inside the museum. The newly commissioned gardens will be sited outdoors in Flushing Meadows Corona Park and the Queens< Botanical Garden. An initial group of ten artists or teams of artists will be selected in May 2003 to make proposals based on site visits and research.  From these proposals five artists (or teams of artists) will be awarded commissions in September 2003. Planting will beginin Spring 2004 for a Summer 2004 presentation. The budget for each commissioned garden is $10,000. Artists:  To be considered, please send a resume and ten images as slides or on DVD (PC compatible). Fill out and include this form with your submission. As an “Artist Gardens” project, teams must be led by practicing artists. Participant(s): Telephone: Email: Address: Primary Contact (if submitting for a team): Send materials to: Valerie Smith, Director of Exhibitions Queens Museum of Art Flushing Meadows Corona Park Flushing, NY 11368-1168     About the Exhibition Artists Gardens Since 1960 (working title) is an exhibition based on the work of approximately 25 international artists who take a critical approach to the design and realization of gardens. The exhibition traces the history of contemporary artists gardens while showing how artists use gardens as a vehicle to explore topics such as war (through memorial gardens), socialist utopias (through Schrebergartens), land reclamation (through gardens that focus on the environment), and philosophy in contemporary society. Artists Gardens Since 1960 will be the first exhibition to concentrate of the recent history of artists’ gardens and the first to present gardens as a form of cultural critique. It will be unusual in that it will lead audiences outside the museum and into the lush green 1,225 acre Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which is adjacent to the museum. Commissioned gardens will be created in the park and in the neighboring Queens Botanical Garden. They will be executed in collaboration with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation as well as the staff and visitors of other cultural organization located in the park, the Queens Botanical Garden and the New York Hall of Science. QMA will form a panel of eight jurors to select and commission five artists to create new site-specific gardens in the Park and the Botanical Garden. The jurors include: Valerie Smith, curator and Director of Exhibitions, QMA; Tom Finkelpearl, Executive Director, QMA; Susan Lecerte, Director, Queens Botanical Garden; Estelle Cooper, Commissioner, Flushing Meadows Corona Park; and artists experienced in creating gardens. This is an opportunity for artists' work to have a public and professional impact in a contemporary art form that is little discussed and difficult to realize. This exhibition will be nationally and internationally publicized, and will make it possible for the creation of new work in this genre. The exhibition offers tremendous potential for interdisciplinary teams and/or a collaboration with the public.  Working with local gardening clubs, schools, and youth organizations, QMA will facilitate these projects creating community-based stakeholders in the exhibition.  Many installations in the exhibition will require monitoring, maintenance, and documentation. Led by QMA’s Teen Docent program, an “Adopt-a-Garden” project will give 9-12th grade students the opportunity to maintain a garden with a team of local youth. Each installation will be documented using digital photography, and uploaded to the exhibition website to create a living document on the Internet.