HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DAGHLIAN COLLECTION OF CHINESE ART
November 19, 2014 – January 10, 2015

The Daghlian Collection of Chinese Art comprises over 1,600 pieces of art and spans 5,000 years of Chinese history. Donated to Queens College, CUNY, in 2012 by private collector William Daghlian, this comprehensive, didactic collection will be used to illustrate Chinese art and art history, as well as Chinese history, culture, anthropology, religion, philosophy and language.

This exhibition will focus on 60, primarily ceramic, objects from The Daghlian Collection. Also on display will be pieces by Queens College ceramics students, alumni, and faculty who have studied The Daghlian Collection and created their own artwork in response.

According to Distinguished Professor of History Morris Rossabi: “The arts of China yield vivid and appealing insights about its economy, politics, religions, society, history, and culture, and offer a remarkable guide to the development of Chinese civilization. Visitors can scarcely gain a better introduction to Chinese culture than by examining its works of art.”

Images of the 60 exhibition objects as well as essays on The Daghlian Collection of Chinese Art can be seen at daghlian.qc.cuny.edu.

ANDY WARHOL’S
PHOTO-AESTHETIC
AND BEYOND
September 11 – November 3, 2014

Exploring Warhol’s use of photo silkscreen, Polaroid photographs, silver gelatin prints, and black and white print media, this exhibition will examine Warhol’s “photo-aesthetic,” a hallmark of Pop Art. “By presenting images in different media side by side, the exhibition will allow viewers to move back and forth between moments of Warhol’s art, work, and life—inseparable parts of a fascinating whole,” says Amy Winter, Godwin-Ternbach Director.

This exhibition will highlight recent gifts from the Andy Warhol Foundation. The recently donated color silkscreens include portraits of the iconic American figures Muhammad Ali and Sitting Bull; “portraits” of two famous monuments, the Brooklyn Bridge and Cologne Cathedral; and Ladies and Gentlemen, an image from a series of portraits of New York City drag queens created by Warhol in 1975. These prints were made following Warhol’s usual formula: a Polaroid portrait of the sitter or image was silkscreened onto paper or canvas and then embellished with silkscreen ink in a bright array of nearly psychedelic colors. The foundation’s gift enhances the Godwin-Ternbach’s already sizable collection of Warhol art, which includes the Campbell’s Soup and Electric Chair suites of photo-silkscreen prints.

Appropriating the means and content of mass media, including celebrities, comic books, and advertising, Warhol utilized photomechanical reproduction methods, emphasizing the replica vs. the original work of art, often in a mock-serious or ironic tone.

ABDIAS NASCIMENTO:
ARTIST, ACTIVIST, AUTHOR
April 28 – June 21, 2014

Click here to download the full exhibition catalogue

This exhibition, organized by John Collins, Director of the Program in Latin American and Latino Studies and the GTM in collaboration with IPEAFRO (Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Afro-Brasileiros, Afro-Brazilian Studies and Research Institute, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), displays forty artworks by Abdias Nascimento (1914-2011), who was a critical political and artistic figure in Brazil and the African Diaspora, an activist and founding force in Brazil’s black movement, as well as an author, playwright, senator, and artist.

Nascimento’s works have been featured throughout the U.S. and Brazil: at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Gallery of African Art, Washington DC, and the Ministry of Culture in Rio de Janeiro, as well as in Paris and Lagos. This exhibition features more than two-dozen of his artworks focused on the theme of “orixás”—deities in the Afro-Brazilian possession and trance-based religion known as Candomblé. Orixás are mediators between heaven and earth, humans and the gods. Nascimento’s paintings will bring together and encourage dialogue between diverse communities in New York and Brazil: Candomblé is a “sister” religion to Santería as practiced in the Hispanophone Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, et al.) and to Haitian Vodou. Both Santería and Vodou are practiced widely in NYC and Nascimento’s artworks will initiate a broader diasporic conversation about the Americas, Africa, and Queens’ historic and contemporary position as a global crossroads.

Sponsored by the Queens College Year of Brazil, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York Council for the Humanities, Transart Foundation, and the Friends of the Godwin-Ternbach Museum.

ANIMALS AT THE MUSEUM
Cultural after school adventures (CASA) with PS 242
Leonard P Stavisky Early Childhood School
April 9 – 12, 2014

Click here to download the full exhibition catalogue

Animals at the Museum was an exhibition of artwork created during an 11-week class at PS 242 Leondard P. Stavisky Early Childhood School with CASA (Cultural Afterschool Adventures) and the Godwin-Ternbach Museum. The class provided an introduction to art history and art making to the second graders at PS 242. When possible, art objects from the Godwin-Ternbach Museum were brought to the school for the students to examine firsthand. By looking at representations of animals in different styles of art, students were introduced to art history—art across time and from cultures all over the world. The students learned that all cultures make art but the materials they use and the types of art created are as different as the people themselves. The classes addressed questions about art: What is art? Who is an artist? How and why is art created?

The lessons exposed students to printmaking, painting, drawing, and sculpture in addition to technical skills such as perspective and color theory. But most importantly, the lessons gave the students an opportunity to engage in open-ended creativity and experimentation. The 2nd grade students came up with exciting solutions to problems they faced and creative additions to their projects. While the students may not remember the names of the artists and cultures they studied, this class has the potential to serve as the beginning of a lifetime of excitement for the diversity of art and art making.

The Cultural Afterschool Adventures (CASA) program, provided by the Kupferberg Center for the Arts, Queens College, is made possible through the generosity of New York City Council Member Peter Koo, and is supported in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

QUEENS COLLEGE ART FACULTY
February 13 – March 29, 2014

Click here to download the full exhibition catalogue

Curated by Amy Winter, GTM Director, this exhibition showcased artworks by members of the Queens College Art Department which demonstrate the diversity and talent of twenty artists working in the media of painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, installation, and conceptual art. Among the faculty are many internationally acclaimed individuals whose works are as diverse as the practices and styles of the artists themselves. Covering a wide range of themes from provocative, amusing, and personal to politically-engaged and technically experimental, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum is proud to present these ambitious and provocative works.


Judith BERNSTEIN
Arthur COHEN
Nancy COHEN
Maureen CONNOR
Susan Spencer CROWE
Christopher DARLING
Laura DODSON
Glenn GOLDBERG
Tony GONZALEZ
Matt GRECO
Sinying HO
Diane KAROL
James LEE
Deborah MESA-PELLY
Nathaniel LIEB
Tommy MINTZ
Tyrone MITCHELL
Matt NOLEN
Debra PRIESTLY
Gregory SHOLETTE
Suzy SURECK

ART OF INK IN AMERICA 2013/2014:
GESTURE AND BEYOND
November 21 – December 30, 2013

This exhibition featured new works by Art of Ink in America Society (AIAS) members and represented the group's return to New York after their previous 2011/2012 exhibition in Manhasset, NY and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Approximately 50 pieces by 32 members and five invited artists were on view.

New York was one of the first cities where modern, abstract calligraphy took root, inspired by a major retrospective of Abstract Expressionism in the 1990s. Up to that point, there was little appreciation of its development, with the focus remaining on traditional Asian calligraphy. At that time a Japanese gallery owner commented, “It is a surprise and a brave achievement that this kind of new calligraphy is being shown in Manhattan.” Since then, with piqued interest in abstract calligraphy, it is particularly meaningful that Gesture and Beyond returns to New York, where contemporary calligraphy first received recognition. Abstract calligraphy has flowered all over the world, and Gesture and Beyond shows why.

The exhibition included work that encompasses traditional, abstract, and avant-garde pieces, demonstrating the many different forms and innovative techniques available to contemporary ink painters. Since its founding over fifteen years ago, the Society has exhibited in East Asia, Europe, and North America and has grown to include artists from China, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Romania, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United States.

ARAM'S HANGUEL CALLIGRAPHY: Masterworks of Traditional and Contemporary Korean Calligraphy

On view in the upper gallery were Masterworks of Hangeul Script by Aram, pen-name of the Art of Ink in America Society's president, Dr. Yoo Sung Lee. Hangeul was invented in 15th-century Korea by King Sejong and court scholars during the Joseon Dynasty. This exhibition showed a variety of hangeul styles as well as contemporary re-interpretations and adaptations. Different styles include the woodblock printing style, the transcript style, the palace style (which includes the formal or regular style, and the cursive or grass tyle), and the commoner style.

BIALA: VISION AND MEMORY
September 12 – October 26, 2013

Janice Biala (1903-2000) was well known for her charming interiors, still-lifes, and landscapes. Her distinctive canvases are informed by her fascinating life in Paris with celebrated author Ford Madox Ford and her friendships with members of the New York School. Biala witnessed the eclipse of Paris as the international center of modernism, the rise of Abstract Expressionism, and the dizzying succession of movements that radically transformed the very concept of art during the second half of the 20th century. Through it all, she continued to paint exquisitely crafted canvases in a personal style that, even now, resist classification.

This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s career, featuring 50 paintings, collages, and drawings from public and private collections and the Estate of Biala, and two paintings from the Godwin-Ternbach Museum’s permanent collection. It will also include books by Ford Madox Ford for which Biala provided illustrations, as well as personal photographs, and exhibition catalogues and announcements that document her social and artistic circles in New York and Paris. The continuous screening of a documentary and interview by Judith Wechsler, filmed in her studio in 1995, and a fully illustrated catalogue, accompany the exhibition. Biala: Vision and Memory serves as a captivating introduction to the artist’s life and art.

Curated by Diane Kelder, Professor Emerita, Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY

PALAEMON: A SURVEY OF PAINTINGS BY JON IMBER
May 1 – June 14, 2013

Click here to download the full exhibition catalogue

This display of over 40 paintingsby Jon Imber celebrates 35 years of discovery and experimentation in painting, moving from figuration through landscape to abstraction. With his judicious application of paint, using the processes of layering and blending, as well as scraping away, Imber achieves images alive with glowing richness. Imber’s work references not only the Abstract Expressionists of the last century but also artists of the Venetian School in the 16th century, with their mastery of light and color. The artist's influences range broadly from Cezanne and Van Gogh to the frescoes at Pompeii, from medieval cathedral sculpture to Matisse and Beckman. Like the Venetians and the Impressionists, Imber believes in color over design. His influences reflect the tensions he plays with in his own work: personal vision versus the material of paint, content versus form.

In 2012, Imber was diagnosed with ALS, a neurodegenerative disorder. As he lost the use of his right hand and arm, Imber persevered and trained himself to paint with his left hand. The most recent paintings on exhibit were made in this manner. Now the progression of the disease is such that Imber’s left hand is beginning to fail. In some of the newest work, Imber has returned to painting portraits, examining mortality and legacy through images of relationships between father, son, and mentor.

Curated by Elizabeth Hoy. An essay by poet and essayist, William Corbett, accompanies the catalogue.

REFORMING THE IMAGE NORTHERN EUROPE IN THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
February 4 – April 27, 2013

Click here to download the full exhibition catalogue

This exhibition, curated by eleven Dutch art history seminar students and professor Christopher Atkins, includes paintings, prints, sculpture and historical artifacts from the 16th-18th century Netherlands, Germany, England, France and colonial Queens.

It shows how art pictured new attitudes about man and the natural world and reflected a rise in democracy and the middle classes. In sites impacted by the Protestant Reformation, religious, social, and scientific revolutions engendered a flowering of secular subject matter and naturalistic aesthetics that gave birth to modern art genres.

The exhibition examines how artworks provide a glimpse of history and evidence of the values and structure of societies, focusing on Dutch art and culture, well represented in the GTM. Themes addressed include: the emergence of capitalism, the market, the individual and the development of taste, looking at newly embraced subjects such as landscape, portraiture, still life, and genre scenes, in contrast to religious and dynastic subjects of the pre-modern era.

Curators: Anthony Biondolillo, Jenna Caputo, Lu Meng Chu, Lisa Finger, Hana Isoda, Thea Lanzisero, Nakyoung Lee, Kyrstin McCabe, Stacey Scheider, Heather Simon, Kaitlyn Tucek

POSTERS AS HISTORY:
TEACHING WITH PRIMARY SOURCES
November 12 – December 21, 2012

The exhibition displays over 30 Vietnam War protest posters from the museum’s permanent collection as well as photographs and archival materials from the Queens College Archives. It demonstrates how art can be used as a dynamic device to teach and bring history and politics to life for students and public audiences alike.

Bold design and strong messages make posters an ideal medium for examining aesthetic, social, political, and philosophical perspectives. Posters document the many voices, organizations, and moods of this revolutionary and turbulent period in American history. Organized by museum director and curator Amy Winter, QC Secondary Education professor Michael Krasner (Political Science) and Jack Zevin (Secondary Education), and Townsend Harris High School (THHS) Assistant Principal Susan Getting, the exhibition was curated by 300 THHS honors students, who researched and wrote didactic and creative texts about the posters. Photographs and printed materials from the college archives, donated by alumni active in student organizations, rallies, and other activities on and off campus during the 1960s and 70s, accompany the posters.

The project began with a grant awarded by the Library of Congress to the Taft Institute for Government at Queens College, to teach history and political science using the posters as primary sources. GTM, QC, and THHS educators led student teams in the choice and interpretation of posters, using supplementary primary sources like historical and popular materials from the museum and Library of Congress online collections to augment the installation. These materials and the posters have been digitized to develop a website with curricula for student and teacher use, and a CD for local and national distribution. Alumni and audience interviews about the era will also be included on the website/CD.

H.A. SIGG, THE LEGACY:
A RETROSPECTIVE
September 10 – October 26, 2012

The H.A. Sigg online exhibition catalogue with curator’s essay is available at: HASigg.com/gtm

H.A. Sigg's elegant abstract paintings engage in a mysterious and mystical dialogue between the forces of nature and his inner meditations. The artist's invention and repetition of bold, singular forms, set upon layered panels and fields of color, recede into the depths of an otherworld. Color and light are key elements in these works, creating a feeling of transcendent space and a rhythmic interplay of forms. A strong awareness of the artist's hand in brushwork and gesture places him firmly within the traditions of Abstract Expressionism and European post-war abstraction, recalling but powerfully revising those practices, to fuse Asian and Western traditions.

.

INTERWOVEN WORLDS: EXPLORING DOMESTIC AND NOMADIC LIFE IN TURKEY
March 9 – April 29, 2012

Click here to download the full exhibition catalogue

Interwoven Worlds: Exploring Domestic and Nomadic Life in Turkey, a special exhibition organized by the Godwin-Ternbach Museum on view at Flushing Town Hall (www.flushingtownhall.org), highlights textiles from the museum’s permanent collection alongside an array of objects within the simulated dwellings of an Ottoman-style interior and a nomadic tent. Outstanding examples of material culture, textiles encode the identities of makers and users, whether local, idiosyncratic and personal or part of larger enduring traditions of the collective conscious or unconscious. Textiles, and particularly carpets, for which the Turks are famous, are the most important type of home furnishing and one of the primary forms of artistic expression in the larger Turkic world. Various categories of  textiles will include hand-woven carpets, kilims (flat tapestry-woven rugs), cicims (embroidered flat-weave rugs), and yataks (flat-woven bed coverings), as well as woven and embroidered accessories like pouches, saddlebags, pillow covers, bedding and hangings for nomadic travel and tents and for settled life.

The exhibition will present materials from the perspective of the “historic present”—through time and across space—to illustrate two overarching themes in Turkish cultural history which operate in harmonic tension with one another: the depth of tradition and history in the region, and the diversity of cultural influence and interconnection with neighbors. Ancient ceramics, glass, and metalwork, complementing the textiles, will represent early expressions of styles and motifs that continue today, and show some of Turkish culture’s Central Asian roots and links.

Visitors will walk inside the dwellings to experience how such living quarters would look and be arranged. These environments will be complemented by photographs, video projection and sound recordings as well as interpretive texts that will examine the technologies, symbolism, and historical significance of the materials. These texts, as well as essays, images and a checklist, will be published in a full on-line catalogue available throughout the exhibition and archived for public access thereafter.

MANSHENG WANG:
Art and Artlessness
February 15 – May 27, 2011

This retrospective of over 70 works, organized in conjunction with Queens College’s “Year of China,” reveals the inspiration for Mansheng Wang’s serene, contemplative creations in relation to centuries-old Chinese art, which Wang interprets in a modern idiom. The exhibit includes landscapes, botanical studies, iconic Buddhist imagery, and calligraphy, as well as Wang’s ink and color works on paper and canvas. Art and Artlessness explores the ways in which Buddhism and Chinese tradition have influenced Wang’s form and content, and shows how he transforms classical subjects and conventions into personal interpretations that intersect with Western culture.

WINDOWS AND MIRRORS:
Reflections on the War in Afghanistan
December 9, 2010 – January 30, 2011

Windows and Mirrors: Reflections on the War in Afghanistan, a traveling exhibition coming to the Godwin-Ternbach Museum for the second stop on its cross-country tour. The show features fifty 4’ x 6’ panels on parachute fabric made by an international group of artists, including participants from Queens College. The exhibition also introduces childrens’ images collected by Dr. Zahir Wahab, a professor of education at Lewis and Clark College who visited Afghanistan and asked high school students to draw images from their daily reality.

Click here to download the activity guide

Marlene Tseng Yu:
NATURE AND COSMOS
September 13 – November 24, 2010

Organized in conjunction with Queens College's "Year of China," this 40-year retrospective of brilliantly colored paintings and murals by internation­ally recognized Taiwanese-born artist Marlene Tseng Yu displays the power of nature and the artist’s visionary fusion of traditional Eastern and modern Western form and content. Recent retrospectives in Beijing and Shanghai, and major exhibitions in Prague, Taipei and New York, have put her on the map as a contemporary artist of no-little-significance. To date, she has had 63 solo exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and the Far East, which have been reviewed in nine languages in over 170 publications. Her works are included in more than 1000 public and private collections.

From 1969 to 2007, Tseng Yu lived and worked in SoHo; in 2008, she opened a studio in Long Island City. Her rigorous training in classical Chinese art, followed by study and teaching in Colorado in the 1960s, gave her the masterful skill that brought her early recognition. Acclaimed for their calligraphy and free brushwork, her 12 x 36-foot canvases have drawn comparisons with the monumental works of Jackson Pollock and his colleagues, who sought to envisage the sublime. Tseng Yu has achieved this, and her life-long concern with the paradoxical fragility of the environment has led her and her husband, James, to found the Rainforest Art Foundation, to support and exhibit like-minded artists, poets, and writers.

Paintings on paper and canvas selected from the many series of her long and prolific career show the artist's development from figuration in the "Dream" series to abstraction in the "Forces of Nature" series, culminating in the colossal murals for which she is renowned. Nature and Cosmos is a primary, ongoing theme that reveals Tseng Yu’s inspiration in the forms and energies of natural and cosmic phenomena. Overwhelming in their radiance and outsize proportions, these works mirror the staggering beauty and power of nature—abstractly capturing its intensity and diversity, from cascading avalanches to melting glaciers; from the intimate structure of cellular systems to crystals of minerals and ice.

Chin Chih Yang: My New Job
October 25 – October 27, 2010

A darkly comic installation and performance piece, multimedia artist Chin Chih Yang, works to assemble materials for this Queens college campus-wide installation and performance piece.  Wearing a full dress suit, portraying an unemployed individual doing the only paid work available to him in the current recession: collecting beverage cans for redemption. Simulating the behavior of this “professional,” Yang explores the ambiguous status of his character, and others like him. By helping to reduce waste, he is a good citizen, maybe even a hero, but in an ironic twist he is also a lowly scavenger, struggling to save himself rather than the planet.

Chee Wang Ng:
September 11
Memorial Installation
September 4 – September 15, 2010

The September 11 tragedy brought out massive expressions of grief at all levels of society—from silent private cries to huge public vigils. Chee Wang Ng’s moving installation is his response to 9/11. It fuses the symbolism, objects and music of Chinese and American culture to express the grief and solidarity of Americans and the global community and commemorate the event, one year before its 10th anniversary.

To mourn the nation’s loss of lives and innocence, he transformed the seven red stripes of the U.S. flag into seven red bleeding lines—the blood of victims—which wrap around a 10-inch-diameter bowl filled with rice, an iconic Chinese symbol. Food for the living, a bowl of rice is also a sacrificial offering to the dead. Two wide chopsticks at the bowl’s center bear a ghostly resemblance to the Twin Towers.

Ng’s installation is part of a three-part installation in red, white and blue concurrently on view at the Aljira Contemporary Art Center in Newark, NJ, and the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in Lower Manhattan in their new space designed by Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. A preface to Chinatown POV: Reflections on September 11th, an exhibition opening at MOCA in Fall 2010, the installation is part of a group of first-person accounts, photographs and mixed-media installations collected by MOCA, representing voices from a neighborhood just ten blocks away from Ground Zero that shared their thoughts on life in the “frozen zone.” Queens College’s installation is red, while the others are white and blue.

Dalí Today.
A Cultural Event
Dalí Dance and Beyond.
An exhibition
April 12 – June 12, 2010

A multimedia cultural event, including:

Dalí Dance and Beyond – an exhibition of never-before-displayed photographs, films, objects documenting Dali’s collaboration with Léonide Massine, Georges Balanchine and Maurice Béjart in Bacchanale (1939), Mad Tristan (1944) and Gala (1961).

Dalí Today – an international symposium on Dalí's significance for contemporary art.

Eorasonnée – a contemporary choreography. Virginie Souquet created Eorasonnée in the spirit of Dalí's work and dances this solo neo-surrealist ballet, as she says, "at the border of madness without restraint."

SCHOLARS, EXPLORERS, PRIESTS: How the Renaissance Gave Us the Modern World
February 2 – March 27, 2010

To view online catalogue click image at left

The achievements of Renaissance Europe ushered in key aspects of the modern world. Over seventy objects from the GTM collection explore three currents that live on in Western tradition: tension between religious authority and challenges to traditional faith; revival of classical mythology and history; and an empirical spirit that led to greater realism and the rise of new artistic subjects, including portraiture, landscape, genre scenes, and scientific illustration.

FITZ MAURICE:
COMMON GROUND
Before, During, After - The Fall of the Berlin Wall
November 2 – December 19, 2009

Common Ground is an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and prints by Fitz Maurice, the internationally acclaimed American artist and winner of the Jackson Pollock-Lee Krasner Award. This year, 2009, celebrates the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Reuinification of Germany. In 1990, the German Parliament chose to exhibit Berlin: Metamorphosis as the artistic rendition of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. Berlin: Metamorphosis, now retilted Common Ground, captures history in the making with expressive paintings that reveal this momentous historic event and promote Universal Tolerance.

NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL: Andean Textiles and Material Culture
September 8 – October 24, 2009

To view online exhibition click image at left

Hand-woven textiles complemented by featherwork, metalwork, wood and ceramic objects represent the major form of art, communication and history of Andean civilization from the early Chavín and Paracas cultures (ca. 1500 BCE - 0 CE), to the culminating Inca Empire (1400-1534 CE), one of the most advanced civilizations in world history. Weaving patterns and colors, which define cultural identity and beliefs, express themes of ritual and the natural world, fertility, life and death, and the sacred and the mundane. Selected modern ethnographic textiles illustrate the persistence of traditional craftsmanship and religious and cultural symbolism in the work of contemporary Andean peoples.

WORKING THROUGH THE GREAT DEPRESSION:
Prints from the New York Regional Graphics Division of the Works Progress Administration, Federal Art Project in the Godwin-Ternbach Museum Collection
February 9 – June 9, 2009

To view online exhibition click image at left

Over 75 prints from the museum’s collection show the talent and diversity of artists supported by the WPA in the 1930s. Images of New Yorkers at work and play, at the automat and on the rooftops and sidewalks of New York, are exhibited alongside views of the Queensboro Bridge, the 1939 World’s Fair, Greenwich Village, and Coney Island.

Artists were critical to the representation of New York and the populist ideals of the Progressive era. But side by side with these buoyant images of are those of economic hardship and deprivation, the inevitable consequences of the Great Depression.

Exhibition support has been generously provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Queens College Office of the President, and the Friends of the Godwin-Ternbach Museum. The lecture series is funded by the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Click to read about WPA 2.0

Click hear to read about WPA 2.0 Putting People Back to Work

Click here to see video on WPA 2.0 Painting a National Portrait

POWER TO THE PEACEFUL: Peace Quilts from Around the World
December 15, 2008 – January 15, 2009

Beautiful handcrafted quilts promoting the theme of world peace, augmented by photographs and videos documenting their creation, were assembled by QC professor Rikki Asher. The display includes works by teachers and students of India’s Pardada Pardadi Education Society, dedicated to the empowerment of rural village girls; Faith Ringgold’s “Peace Story Quilts” based on reaction of children to 9/11; quilts from upstate New York’s Omega Institute for Holistic Studies and Eleanor Roosevelt Community Center for Girls; and quilts by QC Art Education students.

MEDITATION IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE LANDSCAPE
October 15 – December 6, 2008

To view online exhibition click image at left

“Meditation in Chinese Landscape” features the work of 12 artists from Taiwan, China, Malaysia, and the US, working in a variety of media including painting, photography, installation, digital art, and video art, to capture the spirit of the Chinese landscape in a contemporary context, using modern visual language and idioms to express their ideas.

BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS: Motherhood is NOT a Class Privilege in America
August 25 – September 27, 2008

To view online exhibition click image at left

This exhibition of 56 stunning prints by leading documentary photographers addresses current public policies on education, health care, housing, and incarceration sustain poverty in the U.S. By displaying photographs of women who occupy "reviled categories" – women too young, too poor, too gay, too disabled, too foreign, to be "legitimate mothers" – these images show women being mothers, with strength, dignity and determination, to stimulate new thinking about motherhood, public policy, media, and politics. The exhibition is accompanied by two photo-based books and "voice-text" panels with statements by the photographed subjects.

CROSSING THE BLVD
February 4 – June 28, 2008

To view online exhibition click image at left

This ground-breaking multimedia exhibition documents the lives of recent immigrants — those who came here with support and sponsorship, those who attained refugee status, and those who remain displaced and undocumented.

Using audio interviews, still photography, and innovative installation design, artists Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan conduct a global journey through the streets of Queens, with stories of ocean and border crossings, wars, economic hardship, dreams, and cultural divides. An interactive booth integrated into the display allows individuals to write their own stories and add their own pictures.

SPIRIT AND POWER
in African Art
October 1 – December 15, 2007

To view online exhibition click image at left

This exhibition of over 100 objects from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries will comprise masks, figures, and ritual and practical objects. Featured objects are made of wood, copper alloy, brass, bronze and ivory and come from regions throughout Africa such as Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Zaire.

The objects are selected from the Godwin-Ternbach Museum’s permanent collection as well as that of the Queensborough Community College Art Gallery and will run concurrently with a special exhibition of Cameroon art www.qccartgallery.org on view at the Queensborough Community College Art Gallery.

Spirit and Power interprets each object’s aesthetic and social or religious significance and provides a compelling look at the influence and importance of African art in our current culture and economy. Public programs will discuss these topics as well as the cross-currents of influence flowing between African and Western art.

Sharing Dreams Across the Digital Divide: Cuban & American Graphic Art
June 25 – August 9, 2007

To view online exhibition click image at left

Americans may be surprised to learn that materials such as books, magazines, and digital art are not covered by the U.S. embargo on Cuban products—leaving Americans and Cubans free to exchange ideas through art and culture.

Since 2004, graphic designers in both countries have been exchanging ideas in the liveliest way through an ongoing project called “Shared Dreams” that culminates in the annual International Digital Design Exhibit in Havana. Using visual design and digital technology—the language of artists—as well as their own written commentary, they reach across borders to create dramatic and brilliantly colored posters. From 2004 through 2006, a total of 18 Cuban and 18 U.S. designers participated, producing posters on the themes of “Shared Dreams,” “Dreams of Peace,” and “Love Conquers All.”

Now, all 36 original posters will be on display in Sharing Dreams: Cuban and American Graphic Designers Across the Digital Divide, at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, from June 25 through August 9. The work demonstrates that Cubans and Americans think surprisingly alike when it comes to peace and security, and the importance of grassroots interaction in building bonds of friendship. This important exhibition, which has traveled to Canada, as well as the West Coast and the Puffin Cultural Foundation in Teaneck, New Jersey, now makes its New York debut.

Accompanying the main gallery exhibition will be posters of Cuban cinema and selections of Cuban art recently given by the Lannan Foundation to the Godwin-Ternbach Museum collection.

The Grandeur of Islamic Art in Image and Object
February 13 – May 31, 2007

To view online exhibition click image at left

This exhibition features stunning fine art photographs of the world-renowned Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, assembled by Iranian-born entrepreneur and Queens College alumnus, Nasser D. Khalili, Research Professor at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies. Selected Islamic objects from the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, co-curated by Lisa Brody, Assistant Professor, Queens College Art Department, accompany the display.

Funding for the exhibition has been made possible, in part, by the Office of the President of Queens College, the Michael Harrington Center, the Kupferberg Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Friends of the Godwin-Ternbach Museum.

POPSTARS!
September 18 – December 14, 2006

To view online exhibition click image at left

POPSTARS! features original prints and multi-media works by the superstars of Pop Art: Patrick Caulfield, Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Mel Ramos, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol, including the Campbell's Soup II and Electric Chair series.
 
In the world of Pop art, the everyday was portrayed as extraordinary in the same way that celebrity was an idol of worship. From Lichtenstein’s comic strip art and Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans to Larry Rivers’ interpretation of media and historical events, Pop art did not discriminate between kitsch and
political commentary. Anything and everything was fair game. POPSTARS! examines the relationship between
Pop art and the current phenomenon of
pop culture. Pop art revolutionized American art and triggered a subculture all its own whose impact is still felt today in society’s veneration of celebrity and extreme consumerism.

Louis Armstrong:
American Jazz Icon
June 20 – August 10, 2006

The works in this exhibition are drawn from the Louis Armstrong House Museum and Archives at Queens College. They include artworks and writings by Louis himself, awards, albums, photographs and memorabilia from his collection and from popular culture, which document and celebrate his life. This exhibition is dedicated to Louis Armstrong and to the City of New Orleans that gave birth to this beloved icon of American culture.

The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Indentity, Globalization
February 14 – June 1, 2006

To view on-line catalogue,
click image at left.

An exhibition of over 30 garments and numerous textiles, representing aesthetics and techniques from around the world, selected from the Godwin-Ternbach Museum and the Queens College Costume Collection and complemented by loans from private collections and international designers. Traditional garments and textiles of non-Western cultures are shown along with modern examples from Western societies to explore how the world of fashion has been enriched by different ethnic sources, the reciprocal relationship of fashion and culture, and the central role of clothing in our lives. Designed to highlight and embrace the rich multicultural composition of the borough of Queens, it demonstrates how fashion, based in the world of appearances, is an ideal vehicle for visual interpretation and examination of our world.

September 15 – December 15, 2005

Photojournalist Barbara Grover has traveled throughout the land to interview and photograph people for this project. Life-size photographs and first-person narratives in text and audio format offer an alternative approach to the most important global issue of our times, using visual art as an educational medium to effect and transform social and political consciousness. The photos and narratives, printed on large canvas panels side by side with the texts, represent Israelis and Palestinians from all walks of life and perspectives. Their stories answer the question of what the land means to them in candid, intimate terms. The Museum will host lectures, films, and open forums led by national figures of Israeli and Palestinian security, diplomacy, public policy, and religion, engaging individuals throughout Queens and metropolitan NY.

Music and the Visual Arts: A Multicultural Celebration
June 18 – August 4, 2005

This exhibition celebrates the cultural diversity of the borough of Queens and the theme of music with work by artists from all over Queens, including paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and installations. Complementing the contemporary art, in the upper gallery, are selections from the Museum's collection, with works ranging from the ancient world to the 20th century that also depict music and related images of dance and celebration from various cultures.

Annemarie Schwarzenbach: Selected Photographs and Writings, 1933-1940
February 7 – June 2, 2005

Organized by Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College. Curated by Barbara Lorey de Lacharièrre.

Celebrated abroad and the subject of numerous films and books, Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) led a short but intense life marked by conflict, drug addiction, unhappy affairs—and prodigious talent as a photographer and author. Called the “ravaged angel” by Thomas Mann, writers like Carson McCullers dedicated novels to her, while others described her as a “noble being of captivating charm.” Only recently has she become known beyond the German-speaking world. This exhibition documents her work in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East during the 1930s and on the verge of World War II. It provides a glimpse into the heart and mind of this singular and multi-talented individual whose life was both unusual and tragic.

Recent Acquisitions; 1998-2004 October 13 – December 15, 2004

Artworks carefully selected from more than 500 objects donated over the past six years include New Guinea ancestral totem poles, a suite of prints by Surrealist Max Ernst, woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer; a 15th- century Gothic head of the Virgin Mary, an 18th-century Madonna and Child of the Cuzco School, pre-Hispanic Peruvian textiles and ceramics, and prints by Braque, Miró, Hiroshige, Bearden, and others. A beautiful group of Spanish and Latin American paintings, prints, and drawings donated by The Lannan Foundation, a major supporter of the visual arts in America, is also on display.

Memory and History
February 18 – June 6, 2004

Co-sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, and The Center for Jewish Studies.

Through their uniquely individual yet universal artworks, Amore and Jakobsberg explore themes of immigration, family, and history, and confront the highly charged subjects of personal and group cultural memory. Both artists utilize collage and assemblage to evoke the layered, elusive and often disorderly processes of memory to construct poignant visual narratives. Family photographs, letters, and keepsakes mingle with family stories, nostalgia, and history to examine and trigger the sometimes joyful, sometimes painful or bittersweet, remains of the past.

The Light of Infinite Wisdom: Asian Art from the Godwin Ternbach Museum and Other Collections October 15 – December 20, 2003

Co-curated by Xiao Ping Lin (Professor, Art History, Queens College); co-sponsored by the Asian-American Center; with loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and other private collections in New York.

A wide range of works in all media, including sculpture, metalwork, ceramics, paintings, woodblock prints, decorative arts, and textiles are highlighted in this exhibition of over 90 objects from China, India, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Thailand, Tibet, and Sri Lanka, dating from the second millennium BC through the 20th century. The exhibition thematically explores the interrelation of these works in the contexts of Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, and Taoism, the five major sources of wisdom that have enlightened Asian civilizations to this day.

Clinton Hill: 1980-2002
February 18 – May 23, 2003

This 20-year retrospective of 80 hand-made paper constructions, wood and plastic relief sculptures, paintings, and prints celebrates Clinton Hill's long and distinguished career as an artist of the New York School. A pioneer paper artist, Hill was one of the first to explore the possibilities of handmade paper as an art form, which resulted in a dramatic synthesis of abstract imagery and material support.

En Foco, New Work: 2001 Annual Award Exhibition
June 18 – July 30, 2002

On display are award-winning portfolios of multicultural photographers Gaye Chan (Hawaiian- Chinese), Lisa Jong-Soon Goodlin (Korean-born American); Larry McNeil, (Northwest Coast Tlinglit tribe), and Rosey Hong-An Truong, (Vietnamese-American). These highly accessible and emotionally moving images incorporate color and black and white photographs and texts, autobiographical themes and cultural issues in traditional, documentary, abstract, digital, and other alternative photographic processes. En Foco is a national non- profit photography collective that sponsors the work of outstanding photographers of African, Asian, Latino and Native American heritage.

Director’s Choice: Highlights of the Godwin-Ternbach Collection, Part II: Renaissance to Modern Art
October 10 – December 20, 2002

This second installation reintroducing the Museum’s collections includes
highlights of sculpture, decorative arts, paintings, drawings and prints, from the 15th century to modern times; and art and artifacts of African, Asian, and Native American Northwest Coast cultures.

Director’s Choice: Highlights of the Godwin-Ternbach Collection, Part I: Ancient to Renaissance Art
April 17 – June 1, 2002

A reintroduction of the Museum, this exhibition displays the best of the collection’s art and artifacts from the ancient worlds of Mesopotamia and the Near East, Asia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and pre-Columbian America, and artworks from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.