Brian D.'s Profile

3/5/2014

The Queens Museum recently opened an expanded space and it looks fantastic. The old galleries had an awkward shape. The panorama totally dominated everything, being so much bigger and taller than everything else, and the main galleries were just filling it out in a square. The exaggerated height and curved walls tapering into narrow corners were just completing the building, not serving the interests of displaying artwork.

But the new galleries, in a former ice rink, are spacious and rectangular and very amenable to displaying all kinds of art. The NYC watershed map and tiffany glass collection (which always seemed like somewhat odd companions for the contemporary art that the museum usually shows) are still around but separated from the other exhibits in a more coherent fashion. Now there's a permanent display of memorabilia from the World's Fair, which maybe had been in the museum before, but I had never noticed it in the old configuration. The old, oddly shaped galleries are still in use, but the way movement flows into them from the central court feels elegant and now the variety of spaces that they contribute to spices up the experience of the museum visit. On my last visit a rounded wedge-shaped gallery featured works by Cuban artists, highlighting the diversity of artistic communities on display at QMA that you don't always find at the big NYC museums. Upstairs in the education area there was a small collection of unlabeled works--a project that encourages people to look at art without consideration of names, a gesture I appreciated. There was a denim jacket with punk stuff painted all over the back that held my interest for a while, and a painting that I'm pretty sure was made by Philip Guston (not that it matters).

One of the exhibitions in the main space was the Queens International, a biennial exhibition featuring artists who live or work in Queens. There was a lot of good stuff here, and great variety. I won't go into detail about it but I remember one video piece with a hip hop soundtrack and a women shimmying around a kitchen in their underwear with hands duct-taped behind their backs that made my friend say "Art is the best!"

The real highlight for me though was the exhibition "Peter Schumann: The Shatterer," which is about the activity of the Bread and Puppet theater, which has been doing performances and participating in activist demonstrations since the 1960s. There are larger-than-life paper-mache puppets, masks, books... It's so richly textured and full material - i felt like I would walk around, take a look from another perspective, and see a whole other layer of drawings and objects that I hadn't noticed before. From nonsense words and stories to grotesque body shapes, pointed renderings of expressive gestures and wistfully dashed-off ephemeral fragments, the two big galleries are packed floor to ceiling with details that are all worth stopping and pondering. It's up through March 30, 2014, and I would urge any art lover to check it out.

All in all, the Queens Museum is great and keeps getting better. I feel proud to live in its borough.