Exploring the Queens Museum: A Newfound Appreciation for Art and History

I went to the Queens Museum located at New York City Building Flushing Meadows Corona Park Queens, NY 11368. Before coming to this museum, I didn't know there was a museum within Queens. I was overwhelmed by the artworks but the one that caught my eye was the Panorama of the City of New York. The Panorama of the City of New York is on the second floor. The museum provides a private room for the art piece itself. The artwork is a big piece of art displayed in the 1964 world marina fair which is why it is kept in a flawless condition.

The idea of the artwork was created by Robert Moses to celebrate the infrastructures of New York City.

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The Panorama of the City of New York was constructed between 1961 and 1964 by Lester Associates. The art piece took roughly 200 workers to complete it. In order to coordinate the Panorama of the City of New York, they took maps, pictures, and building plans to help them better understand the layout of New York City. The art piece displays the - 320 square miles of New York City's five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Most of the approximately 895,000 individual structures are standardized model units made from wood or plastic. Out of the 895,000 pieces are 25,000 made just to represent NYC landmarks. These were custom made to represent skyscraper buildings, huge factories in the city, colleges, museums, and churches. The Panorama of the City of New York is more realistic than any artwork I have seen.

The artistic composition includes cars and boats to give it more of life like surreality.

What I found fascinating was that throughout the years, the model of New York City at the Queens Museum was kept up to date, adding new infrastructures and additions to the piece throughout the 70s. The interesting part of the art piece is that it also encompasses the airplanes that come in and out of John F. Kennedy airport and LaGuardia airport. The miniature planes are attached to mini ropes that fly out mimicking the actual airports in New York City. In the art display area for the art composition, it provides ramps and different angle perspective to gain the visitor's attention. When I looked at the art piece, I could walk around the whole display area to look at a different viewpoint to see how each area was. You can tell in the Panorama, that it details the five boroughs with precision, you can recognize the Queens portion without looking at the text within the art because you can see Citi Field and Maloof Skate Plaza in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Other building infrastructures that helped me depict where the other boroughs were are the miniature models of Battery Park, Brooklyn Bridge, and Yankee Stadium.

Although this art model of New York City was constructed in the 1960s, architects still update it frequently. The Panorama of the City of New York is a realistic miniature model of New York City because of the detail and precision from the architectural work done by the Lester Associates, Rafael Vinoly Architects, and Grimshaw Architects. The art piece took a lot of effort and work to perfect which is why the masterpiece is still looked at as one of the most important art pieces in New York.