Queens Museum Celebrates Renovation with Art, Music, Dance, Tours and Fishing
With speeches by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Borough President Helen Marshall and Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl (above), Queens Museum officially re-opened yesterday after a multi-year, $68 million renovation that doubled its exhibition space and added an atrium with a chandelierlike glass hanging, bookstore and cafe. The Flushing Meadows-Corona Park institution also announced its new name — Queens…
With speeches by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Borough President Helen Marshall and Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl (above), Queens Museum officially re-opened yesterday after a multi-year, $68 million renovation that doubled its exhibition space and added an atrium with a chandelierlike glass hanging, bookstore and cafe. The Flushing Meadows-Corona Park institution also announced its new name — Queens Museum — without the tailing “of Art” that it had had since its founding. Now the fun starts with Target Wide Open Weekend, featuring special celebrations and inaugural exhibitions. On November 9th, Queens International 2013 artist Vlada Tomova’s Bulgarian Women’s Choir will start things off, followed by Lynley Bernstein’s Come Fish for Snakehead, a 2.5-hour guided fishing trip in park waterways; and the Poets in the Galleries: Tan Lin series, which utilizes the museum’s exhibition space as an invigorating site for exploration, interactive readings and discussions. At 3 pm, the museum will launch An Inclusive World, a group show examining how art transforms the lives of those with a wide array of needs and abilities. The day will continue with Joseph Heathcott’s Brooklyn-Queens Borderlands Virtual Walking Tour on the Panorama; Matthew Volz’s Meanwhile Back in Queens…, a live concert; Llego FeFa 4. Rosa de los Vientos, a performance by Magdalena Maria Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard celebrating the the opening of Citizens of the World: Cuba in Queens; Fujui Wang’s Hyper Transmission New York, a site-specific sound performance capturing locally sampled electromagnetic waves rendered in a specially devised directional speaker; and Joro Boro’s Smuggle Party, a participatory DJ performance mashing up collected tunes from museum visitors’ MP3 players. There are more activities on November 10th and November 11th and other special events throughout November. Click through to see another picture from the event yesterday…
Photos by Rob MacKay; Rendering via Queens Museum
The Queens Museum actually does a lot for their surrounding community. They have programs like New New Yorkers and ArtAccess – programs that allow groups like new immigrants and children with autism a means of expression through art. They are also involved in art projects at Corona plaza and partner with many public schools throughout Queens. Their services are deserving of funding. The Queens Museum is something that people from Queens can be proud of. Just because they’re not the people who clean the streets doesn’t mean they don’t contribute to the quality of life in the borough.