QUEENS MUSEUM MOST WANTED

Last week I took a little field trip out to the Queens Museum. Shamefully, I had never been there, even though I have lived in New York for six years (I am blushing as I type this, trust me!). I chose a beautiful sunny day and took the long subway trip out. Disembarking from the train, I frolicked through the World's Fair grounds and past the amazing Unisphere . . . (more photos I snapped of that here)

I popped into the museum's famous panorama. It is a scale replica of every building in New York City; when new buildings are added or renovated the museum staff even update it! Plus they have tiny planes flying in and out of the model to JFK. The whole thing is quite a spectacle, even if it does contain the occasional pair of dropped sunglasses in the Hudson River!

Then I checked out the impressive Andy Warhol exhibition about his controversial contribution to the American Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair—a large 20' x 20' paneled painting depicting the photos of the FBI's thirteen most wanted men. The show was well researched and informative, calling on Warhol's practice as a whole and fleshing out the mitigating political and practical factors involved in the removal (technically the painting over) of Warhol's work just days after the opening of the fair. It was fascinating to see all the pertinent historical materials gathered in one place—copies of bureau info packets on the criminals at large, letters sent between people involved in the project (including Warhol's friends complaining about FBI raids on his studio!), newspaper articles recounting the removal of the work, etc.—intermingled with Warhol's concurrent silkscreens and the museum's models of the fairgrounds themselves. The show—and the museum's recently renovated space itself—is quite fun to explore and I recommend you take advantage of these last few sunny days of summer and pop over there before the Warhol show closes on September 7. You can also find out more information about the exhibition here and the museum itself here.

After my visit I came home to reread some of the reviews of the show, mostly to see what kind of critical attention it had garnered. I was pleasantly surprised to discover a new article in the New York Times that chronicles an unusually personal backstory; Mr. George Lawler stumbled upon a review of the exhibition earlier this year and was surprised to see his father's face illustrated in one of Warhol's 'most wanted' paintings. The Times story, while brief, recounts Lawler's abandonment by his parents and the unique perspective he has on Warhol's classic decree that 'everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame'. It's a cool article and I recommend you check it out here.