From the Daily News:
A gleaming "Silicon City" has risen in Queens, complete with a satellite campus of a top-tier university - but you'll have to squint to see it.
It is a pint-size version of a complex for tech innovation, rendered on a famous panoramic model of the city. Though small in size, the model is a nonprofit group's bid to push its big idea for transforming Queens: Bring a tech hub to Willets Point, the shabby warren of body shops near Citi Field that is poised for a huge city redevelopment project.
The Coalition for Change, clamoring to be heard, gave the Daily News an exclusive peek at its model, which will debut at the Queens Museum of Art today.
The museum's executive director, Tom Finkelpearl, said that adding the model to the panorama - built for the 1964 World's Fair - makes the group's concept "viscerally understandable, which is not the case on Google Maps."
Precedent, however, provides a bad omen: Only once before has the panorama featured structures that had not yet been approved, and that was for the city's failed bid for the 2012 Olympics.
Isn't the panorama supposed to show what's there NOW? Why is Finkelpearl allowing this? And why does that thing look like the Millenium Falcon?
25 comments:
As the person entrusted with the museum and its art, Finklepearl is a disgrace. If his museum displayed the Mona Lisa, would he allow a developer to place an artist's rendering of new construction in front of the painting's background, so we can all see what that looks like?
Finklepearl operates a museum, not a development advocacy agency. Evidently he doesn't take the museum seriously. The items on display in the museum must be respected, not exploited for non-art use. In particular, the famous City model symbolizes all of the existing neighborhoods, and was perhaps the one instance in which all neighborhoods received equal treatment. Finklepearl has ruined that. His insensitivity to art and to the people of Willets Point is inexcusable, and he would be well advised to stop doing the bidding of developers who are lobbying him.
Meanwhile, the Willets Point people should use every available means to express their outrage at being obliterated from the City model which Finklepearl is responsible to maintain. Love to see the expression on Finklepearl's face when a couple of hundred Willets Point workers surround the museum, with news media in tow, and demand that the City model be immediately restored to its proper condition.
Finklepearl will rue the day that he allowed the museum to be exploited.
Who is The Coalition for Change? I can't find then anywhere.
Finklepearl operates a museum, not a development advocacy agency. Evidently he doesn't take the museum seriously.
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Precisely! Throw the bum out!!!
Love to see the expression on Finklepearl's face when a couple of hundred Willets Point workers surround the museum, with news media in tow, and demand that the City model be immediately restored to its proper condition.
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Just say when!
What do you expect in Queens---
high class culture?
Sadly, we've become a 4th rate borough that draws unimaginative and often incompetent people to run its institutions.
Then, they insist on defacing what little we have left to brag about---with politically motivated megalomaniac "visions" that benefit only its builders.
By stark contrast---Brooklyn beats us out by a mile---for they do not destroy their cultural icons.
Consider---The Brooklyn Museum versus The Queens Museum---which is the superior attraction?
As it is, I rarely patronize many Queens venues---being only 23 minutes from Manhattan's treasure trove of wonders---via the LIRR.
Our borough offers these high paying directorial patronage positions only to political sucklings as a reward for their years of service to the clubhouse.
Am I a snob?
Absolutely, but that's not my fault!
What does Queens have to offer me---as a tourist for example--- that I can't get better in "the city" (Manhattan)?
There are a few exceptions:
Visitors to New York will venture to Long Island City for its art scene, etc. and travel to the U.S. Open tennis matches in Flushing.
They might come to see the Mets play if they're having a good season.
Other than that where have all our possible tourist attractions gone?
Finklepearl?
"Pearls before swine"!
In this case Tom is the swine pissing all over the museum's pearl!
Looks more like a Romulan ship from an early episode of the original "Star Trek".
This moron should resign! He like every politician and community board member in queens is in the pocket of the developers. Where's the oversight for panorama use?
Why is Finkelpearl allowing this?
I'm convinced all these people like Robert Moses, Bloomberg these people want monuments and legacy's to themselves !!
They hate heritage and are alway looking to change things.
Isn't Finkelpearl the one who tossed (and broke)the restored NYS Pavilion terracotta map sections back outside on the ground after volunteers worked MONTHS to do the restoration work ?
BTW: That panorama IS NOT HIS TO DEFACE or DESTROY !!
I suppose his excuse will be "the city and its skyline is always changing"
Aren't museums to show the "past" not present and predicted future.
Perhaps somebody should buy Finkelpearl a crystal ball and some viewmaster reels of George Jetson to keep him occupied.
--Looking to the future may ass.
-Joe
"Finklepearl operates a museum, not a development advocacy agency."
Absoultely correct anonymous 1 your comments are right on target
What we should have is the artistic vision of the movie "Chop Shop" representing the "city as is".That cheesy old model is hardly an artistic masterpiece worthy of this sort of controversy,though. The Millenium Falcon thing is probably a promotional tie-in to Comicon!
Maybe they can also put the new RKO Keith's in the panorama with planes hitting it.
The link says Times Ledger, but it takes you to NY Daily News.
And for the record, I give the thumbs down to Jukay's junk proposal.
She'll make point five past lightspeed. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, Crappy.
Sorry, I fixed the link.
The Robert Moses "bulldozer's bible" has been read by every successive Queens borough president since that arrogant demagogue croaked.
It's been said that both Donald Manes and his willing accomplice Claire Shulman carried a copy of it to every meeting they attended.
Their favorite passages are:
Genesis #1. chapter #2.
"Thou shalt destroy"!
Exodus #2. chapter #4.
"Take the money and run"!
Come to think of it---Robert Moses thought so much of himself---he actually though he was Moses.
RU kidding?
Practically every Queens director or official is in the developer advocacy business.
Where do you think that politicians get their campaign donations from?
This is a borough of bandits who get elected then re-elected through voter stupidity!
If the Metropolitan Museum of Art was asked to pimp a particular developer's project....their esteemed director would kick the bum that asked them to do so out the door onto 5th Avenue!
But, here in Queens, Finklepearl is a most accommodating bobble head.
"Do you want me to first pull down my pants or pull up my shirt before you bugger me with your request. I guess I can't deny you because you'd cut the Queens Museum's funding".
Hence....coercion which originates from boro hall....doth make cowards of them all!
The local weaklies will spin this story in a positive way. Therefore, the dumbing down of Queensites continues (as if they needed help).
To save the New York City Panorama, we had to destroy the New York City Panorama.
You think that model thing is crazy, look what Finkelpearl's up to now. This weekend he's celebrating the people that work in the various businesses in the iron triangle with a series of tours of the mechanics shops, a screening of the movie Chop Shop, food from the spice factory, a soccer match between various repair shop teams, and an art show of all the statues the guys in there make out of muffler parts. It seems like one minute he's offering people a chance to see what a silicon valley development in Willets Point would be like, and the next he's reminding people of the vibrancy of the lives that exist in Willets Point right now. That sounds almost like he's not taking any side on the development of the triangle.
So i went to the museum to check out this model and it wasn't on view. Appearently it was only placed on the panorama for the photo op. Phew. Maybe Finkelpearl isn't as crazy as any of the anonymous posters here think he is.
Was there for a weekend and Finkelpearl think this is a good use of the panorama:
But Hsu is not giving up, saying Friday there are other suitable locations in Queens, including Astoria, Flushing and the Sunnyside railyards. To promote his plan, the 27-year-old convinced the QMA to allow a model of a proposed tech campus to be put on the Panorama for the weekend.
Dressed in special slippers to protect the large model of the city, Hsu placed his campus at Willets Point.
Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the QMA, noted that when the Panorama opened for the 1964 World’s Fair, its creator, Robert Moses, wanted it used as a planning tool once the fair closed. “We’re not favoring the project, but we believe that the Panorama should be used for this kind of thing,” Finkelpearl said. - Queens Chronicle
Thanks for the clarification Crapper. Does anyone remember when the Queens Museum first opened and the panorama was still being used by the city for planning purposes as Finkelpearl states? If that is true, then there really is nothing wrong with putting this model on to see how it fits into the area. If anyone knows about that phase in the panorama's hisotry, please let us know. Thanks.
The panorama was never used for planning purposes. It was built as an exact replica of the city and updated periodically. Here's the info from the Museum's own page:
http://www.queensmuseum.org/exhibitions/visitpanorama
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