QMAil: February 2007

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We hope you are ready for a busy month because we've squeezed a lot into the next 28 days. Where do we begin? The Panorama, the QMA's true treasure, is reopening on February 4 complete with a new multimedia program that is sure to please. The 13 minute program will offer a dazzling light show, narrated tour, and a trip through New York with still and moving images that bring the model to life. hether you've seen the Panorama before or not, you owe it to yourself to experience it anew. Of course, Robert Moses had the Panorama built, and we are presenting a full-scale examination of his legacy with Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Road to Recreation, also opening on February 4. Discover all that this controversial master planner did to transform the city into the metropolis we know it as today. We are also celebrating the opening of Erasing Borders: Contemporary Indian Artists in the American Diaspora and Lillian Ball: GO ECO, so before you settle in to watch the Super Bowl, spend the day with us. Also this month, join us for a celebration of Black History Month with a unique series of events. More info on these and all of the QMA's February events below. Enjoy.

February masthead: Robert Moses' Sunset Pool, entry pavilion on the pool side, 2005. Photograph by Andrew Moore. Courtesy Andrew Moore.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Road to Recreation

February 4 - May 27, 2007

Opening Reception: Sunday, February 4, 2-5 pm

Our watchword should be that we found our city a wilderness of stone and steel, crowded and inaccessible, and that we opened it to light and air, planted with the green of parks and the laughter of playgrounds, and carved out wide spokes of rims for parkways and expressways to make the city and country one. -Robert Moses

Robert Moses (1888-1981) had a greater impact on the physical character of New York City than any other individual, and given how the process of city building has changed since his time - in response to his controversial methods - it is unlikely anyone will match him in the future. Robert Moses and the Modern City is the first comprehensive exhibition about the vast program of public works he executed as New York's master builder from 1934, when he became Commissioner of Parks, to 1968, when he was ousted from power. The exhibition is organized in three, thematic parts that highlight Moses's strategies and transformation of the city. He built miles of roadway, awesome bridges, every sort of recreational facility - parks, playgrounds, beaches, pools - a convention center, and in a career-ending crescendo, he set in motion one of the nation's largest slum clearance-urban renewal programs.

Moses began his drive to modernize the city by building recreational facilities and roads. Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Road to Recreation presents the beaches, pools, playgrounds, parks and highways that Moses built in the 1930s. They constitute one of the most remarkable and most rapid expansions of the public realm in the history of American urbanism. In a mere decade, Moses restored New York's neglected waterfront with white sand beaches, inserted hundreds of playgrounds into the five boroughs, and connected the city with majestic bridges and landscaped parkways. Never before seen historic docuemnts, models, photographs and drawings join a series of contemproary large-scale photographs by artist Andrew Moore to bring this examination of Moses' legacy to life.

The Road to Recreation joins Remaking the Metropolis at the Museum of the City of New York and Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University to form Robert Moses and the Modern City, the first comprehensive exhibition of Robert Moses's unprecedented public works. Please note: Paid admission to any one venue entitles complemetary entrance to the other two.

Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Road to Recreation at the Queens Museum of Art is made possible with funding by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

More information is available here.

Photo: Robert Moses with model of the proposed Brooklyn Battery Bridge, 1939. Photograph by C. M. Spieglitz, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-USZ62-13079).

Erasing Borders: Indian Artists in the American Diaspora

February 4 - March 4, 2007

Opening Reception: Sunday, February 4, 2-5 pm

Erasing Borders: Indian Artists in the American Diaspora, presents a diverse collection of work produced by 16 artists whose origins can be traced to the Indian Subcontinent. A multi-generational selection of artists negotiates Indian and Western approaches to art making. Each artist has developed intensely personal interpretations of the traditional genres of painting, photography, sculpture and prints, through landscape, abstraction, Indian miniatures, postmodernism, surrealism, and political history. Together, the works can be seen as an effort to transcend the borders that confine and control preconceived definitions of Indian and Western art.

Vijay Kumar, On Faiz's Poem - "Let me think". Monotype on paper, 12" x 12". Courtesy of the artist.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Siona Benjamin
Anna Bhushan
Bivas Chaudhuri
Niyeti Chadha
Nandini Chirimar
Delna Dastur
Vinod Dave
Satish Joshi
Reeta Karmarkar
Vijay Kumar
Alakananda Mukerji
Nitin Mukul
Yamini Nayar
Antonio Puri
Tara Sabharwal
Ela Shah

Erasing Borders: Indian Artists in the American Diaspora was made possible with support from the New York State Council on the Arts. More information is available here.

Lillian Ball: GO ECO

February 4 - May 27, 2007

Opening Reception: Sunday, February 4, 2-5 pm

GO ECO is an interactive installation that illuminates the different perspectives of several participants involved in a wetland preservation project. The concept is metaphorically based on the ancient Asian game of Go, (originally, one of the Four Arts of China along with music, painting, and poetry) which uses strategies to capture territory through balancing tactics. GO ECO also functions as an informational "serious game" installation of video vignettes. Digitally manipulated images with sound are projected in quadrants on the screen to lead players through to the next move. The final outcome of the game is determined by the teamwork of players making their way toward a solution that enables all sides to win or to lose together. GO ECO allows players of many ages to be empowered and to learn about the issues through an art experience that maps paths of action.

Grand Re-opening of the Panorama of the City of New York

Opening Reception: Sunday, February 4, 2-5 pm

After a four-month closure, the Panorama of the City of New York makes a triumphant return complete with an exciting new multimedia program that will redefine how you experience this one of a kind treasure. Originally commissioned by Robert Moses for the 1964 World's Fair, the Panorama is the largest architectural scale model in the world. With each of the city's 895,000 structures included at a scale of 1 inch: 100 feet, it has always offered a truly unique view of the five boroughs. Now, new and return visitors alike will be amazed as the model comes to life through a 12-minute narrated tour program that combines dramatic lighting, the sounds of the bustling city, giant still and moving images projected throughout for an overall entertaining and educational experience. The featured sights of all five boroughs are highlighted as is also accompanied by the myriad sounds of this sprawling metropolis, immersing the viewer in an all-encompassing journey of the Panorama and the city it captures in wonderful miniature.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening Reception for Robert Moses: The Road to Recreation with Curator Gallery Talk & Erasing Borders: Exhibition of Paintings of Indian Artists in America

Sunday, February 4, 2 - 5 pm

2-3 pm: Join architectural historian and curator Hillary Ballon for a gallery talk that will give a comprehensive overview of the exhibition Robert Moses: The Road to Recreation which showcases the recreational facilities Moses built in the 1930s: beaches, marinas, swimming pools, parks, and playgrounds, connected by parkways and bridges of startling beauty, and constituting the greatest modern expansion of the city's public space and facilities. Talk will conclude with a book signing for the release of the accompanying publication Robert Moses and the Transformation of New York (W.W. Norton, co-edited with Kenneth T. Jackson).

3-5 pm: Opening Reception Robert Moses: Road to Recreation and Erasing Borders: Exhibition of Paintings of Indian Artists in America featuring complimentary refreshments and live music by vocalist Samita Sinha accompanied by Marc Cary.

Photo: Orchard Beach crescent, June 2, 1939 (Neg. 17085), Photoarchive, courtesy NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

Chinese Lunar New Year Family Celebration

Sunday, February 11, 1 - 4 pm

Celebrate the Year of the Boar with Chinese Hand Puppetry Show + Workshop

1 - 2 pm: Chinese Theatre Work's hand puppet programs combine Chinese folk songs with traditional hand puppetry to make a lively and engaging introduction to Chinese arts and culture for audiences of all ages. All the programs are performed in English by a company of renowned puppeteers, who bring decades of expertise in the art of puppet manipulation to a puppetry style rarely seen outside of China. The program shows the hand puppet tradition's range - humorous to romantic to heroic - in three scenes accompanied by traditional Chinese music. Chinese Theater Works is able to provide this performance free of charge with the support from the New York State Council on the Arts and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

2 - 4 pm: Refreshments & puppet-making workshops in the Education Studios.

Black History Month Celebration 2006 - Exploring Salsa and Blackness

Saturday, February 17, 3 - 6 pm

Performance & Lecture: The 350+ Year Evolution of Salsa & Screening of Cuban Dance & Music Documentary La Tropical

3 pm: The 350+ Year Evolution of Salsa traces the development of salsa beginning with the manufacture and use of percussion by the Africans, which was permitted by the Spaniards in their Caribbean colonies.

4 pm: La Tropical (David Turnley, 2002, 93 min, b/w, video) La Tropical is an exuberant hotspot for Cuban music with an iconic status comparable to Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. It's where dance and passion have continued to thrive on the periphery of Havana after some sixty years. Pulitzer-Prize winning photojournalist, David Turnley, delves into the lives of the striking array of characters who surround this legendary venue. Featuring music and performances by: Los Van Van, Charanga Habanera, Adalberto Alvarez y su Son, Son Candela, Lo Caro Band, Tamayito y su Salsa, Laito Jr. y su Sonora Sonora.

CINEMAROSA: Queens Only Queer Film Series - Black History Month Celebration

Sunday, February 18, 3 - 6 pm

A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL: THE LIFE AND WORK OF AUDRE LORDE (Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson, 1995, USA, 60 min)
Poet, lover, mother, warrior - Audre Lorde is a fiercely passionate American visionary. Her poetry and prose speak to her deepest convictions - love and anger, civil rights and sexuality, family politics and the glories of nature. She gave voice to a political generation and became a role model not only for Black women but for everyone who believes, as she did, that "liberation is not the private province of any one particular group." In 1992 Lorde lost her battle with breast cancer but she leaves behind a rich and vital legacy. Co-presented with Third World Newsreel; there will be a Q&A after both screenings with Brother to Brother Actor Duane Boutte and Dorothy Thigpen, Director, Third World Newsreel.

BROTHER TO BROTHER (Rodney Evans, US 2004, 90 min)
Winner of numerous awards including the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize and the Gordon Parks Screenwriting Award, Brother to Brother is a feature length narrative film which follows the emotional and psychological journey of a young black gay artist as he discovers the hidden legacies of the gay and lesbian subcultures within the Harlem Renaissance.
**Co-presented with The National Black Programming Consortium**

Visit Cinemarosa's website for more info.

Bus Tour of Robert Moses Sites

Saturday, February 24, 1 - 5 pm

John Kriskiewicz, architectural historian, Lecturer at Municipal Art Society, The Cooper-Hewitt and The Cooper Union on the development of NewYork City and metropolitan area architecture and planning. Barch., Pratt Institute. Meet at the Info Desk near the parking lot entrance. Seating limited please RSVP. The tour will start in the Panorama of the City of New York for an overview of the day. Bus tour stops will include Orchard Beach, Henry Hudson Parkway/Riverside Park, Brooklyn Hts. Promanade and Flushing Meadows Park.

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