Program areas at Queens Museum
Exhibitionsthe Queens Museum is dedicated to presenting high-quality arts and educational programming for the people of new york, particularly the residents of Queens, a uniquely diverse ethnic, cultural, and international community. The Museum's work honors the history of our site and the diversity of our communities through a wide-ranging and integrated program of exhibitions, educational initiatives, and public events.qm works with artists whose practices are both hyperlocal and internationally relevant. Our audiences and constituents are from intercultural, historically underrepresented communities in Queens, and our admission is free. Uplifting bipoc and artists with disabilities, diverse cultures, and aesthetics are central to our mission.qm offers a full suite of arts education offerings family programs on weekends, school visits throughout the week, and in and after-school residencies with local public schools. While the new Queens teens institute for Art and social justice (qti) leverages qm resources to nurture thoughtful, independent young artists and the next generation of leaders in the arts and social change. Long admired by our peers, qm is a model for excellence in education and public programming initiatives such as well-established and respected artaccess educational programming, as well as new initiatives like our in situ artist fellowships and the indigenous practices studio.more recently, the indigenous practices studio (ips) is being co-created with former artist-in-residence tecumseh caesar to form a space for the exploration of indigeneity in Queens. To ensure this work is not extractive but uplifting and focused on reciprocity, the Queens Museum (qm) has completed an extensive co-creation process that centers on listening. Qm has held a series of conversations with indigenous artists, activists, consultants, and partners, as well as knowledge-sharing sessions with the entire staff about the history of the land, local indigenous communities, restorative practices, and restitution work being done in Queens, and long island. Beginning this spring, qm and our ips community will organize six events over the year including public programming at the museum.recent exhibitions includealiza nisenbaumqueens, lindo y querido (april 23 - september 10, 2023), which chronicles the artist's years-long engagement with people at the Queens Museum and its neighborhood, coronatracey roseshooting down babylon (april 23 - september 10, 2023) a radical voice in the international Art world since the mid-90s, tracey rose's (b. 1974, south africa) cutting and uncompromising vision will be on view in an exhibition that will include work created from the 1990s to the present. The exhibition, organized by the zeitz Museum of contemporary Art africa in cape town, interrogates several themes including repatriation, recompense, and reckoning that stem from post-colonial entanglements.emilie louise gossiauxother-worlding (december 6, 2023 - april 7, 2024) the artist's first-ever solo Museum exhibition and the culmination of her 202223 jerome foundation fellowship at the Queens Museum. The exhibition, which presents all new works created at gossiaux's studio at the Museum, radiates from a powerful question: can we imagine another world where unity is co-built across species and disability status and not centered around a single point of view? This exhibition celebrates the autonomy that guide dogs and the white cane provide the blind and low-vision community in navigating a world predominantly designed for sighted people.sonia louise davisto reverberate tenderly (december 6, 2023 - april 7, 2024) the new york-based artist will present a new series of works created while in-residence at the Queens Museum. In the spirit of experimentation, to reverberate tenderly focuses on improvisation as a crucial practice for radical collective action. Will present tufted soft paintings, a site-specific mural, sculptural instruments, and performances that engage with the process of improvisation as a generative and emancipatory form of research.caroline kenta short play about watching shadows move across the room (december 6, 2023 - december 29, 2024) the chicago-based artist's work reinvents abstraction through explorations of geometry, color, and pattern that unfold into grand installations that blur language, painting and sculpture. The monumental installation will span a 40 x 100-foot wall where painted images and high-relief sculptures merge into scenes that both break interpretation and underscore its tensions. Using an all black background as her base, the artist brings together "shadow shapes," improvised figures and hand-painted floor plans to construct domestic spaces - depicting rooms, grids, and plant life.
Public programs and community engagementfamily programsqm places value on programs that encourage families to engage in shared learning experiences through art-making and art-looking activities. An average of 30 families participate in these programs offered each sunday, in both english and spanish. This past year, workshops incorporated a variety of art-making techniques, as well as other outlets for creative expression, such as dance. Additionally, artaccess family workshops are held on the third sunday of each month, and are geared towards engaging families with children of all abilities.queens teensthe Queens Museum invited all new york city high schoolers to participate in our unique Queens Museum: Queens teens x year of uncertainty youth programming. Over several months, teens had the opportunity to participate in various workshops and events around topics such as social justice, Art, and college, and job readiness.this program is curated to encourage exploration and introspection into the meanings of Art and creative expression while creating new possibilities for culture, kinship, and mutual support.new new yorkersfor the past 10 years, new new yorkers has provided recent adult immigrants with pathways to civic participation through the acquisition of important skills, as well as opportunities to express themselves and their cultural traditions in a safe, non-judgmental setting. This year, qm offered 21 unique courses, including both one-time and four to eight week multi-workshop courses. Field trips, such as a visit to the Museum of the moving image, and a number of public events were also organized, which allowed participants to interact with Art and other cultural institutions, supplementing the arts literacy and engagement opportunities offered within courses.some engaging courses offered during the last year include: mini painting i and ii offered in mandarin, painting portraits using watercolor techniques offered in spanish, world cinema & culture offered in mandarin, and esol & poetry. Providing both one-day and longer-form courses again helped to engage both new and returning participants and accommodate various schedules.
Educationqm offered a robust range of education programs for individuals, including k-12 school students, families, recent adult immigrants and older adults with memory loss or affected by alzheimer's, summer camp for middle school youth and teen programs for high school students in our borough. Through these on- and off-site offerings and our numerous partnerships, we provide accessible programs that ensure all those interested can engage with qm and our resources. For each of these programs, qm incorporated our permanent exhibitions as well as the current contemporary Art exhibitions on view.interpretation at qm -while taking into account our uniquely diverse and multicultural constituents, we have found it increasingly important to focus on comprehensive interpretation of Museum resources rather than simply translation. This interpretation initiative informed the creation of interpretation schemes for the panorama, the neustadt collection of tiffany glass, and qi 2018. Panorama kids guides were translated into spanish and mandarin, as these are the languages most spoken by our visitors. Additionally, as a part of our artaccess initiative, qm has robust programs that provide Art making activities for families with children of diverse abilities, which extends into our gallery spaces. To promote accessibility, wall text was made darker and font sizes increased to meet smithsonian standards and guidelines on accessibility requirements. Exhibition kits were created that feature texts in braille and large print and feature replicas of select objects in the exhibition to serve visitors who are blind or have low vision.