2022 NYC Museum Tour: Queens Museum

I decided to kickstart my museum season with Queens Museum, a building formerly used as NYC pavilion during New York World’s Fairs of 1939 and 1964.

Painter and illustrator Glori Tuitt has created a mural, titled Black, Trans, & Alive, that is on view on the facade of the Queens Museum

Exhibition 1:
Tiffany’s Lamps

A fascinating showcase of early 1900s table lamp by Tiffany’s made of richly colored stained glass and bronze.

Exhibition 2:
Relief Map of the New York City Water Supply

Created as a special exhibition for the 1939 World’s Fair, this large scale relief map of New York City and the Hudson Valley showcases the complex journey water has to take from the mountains down to the city.

Exhibition 3:
World’s Fair Collection

The Queens Museum used to be the New York City Building, which was the City’s official pavilion during the 1939-40 and 1964-65 World’s Fairs. Today the museum owns more than 10,000 objects related to those two iconic expositions – and a small amount of them (including souvenir objects, maps, guidebooks, posters) are showcased and rotated in the permanent exhibition.

Exhibition 4:
Panorama of the City of New York

Conceived as a celebration of the City’s municipal infrastructure by urban mastermind and World’s Fair President Robert Moses for the 1964 Fair, the “worlds largest model” was built by a team of more than 100 people working for the great architectural model makers Raymond Lester & Associates over the course of three years.