Memento Mori:
9/11 Twenty-Five Years Later
September 9 – November 30, 2026
Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College (CUNY)
Memento Mori: 9/11 Twenty-Five Years Later creates a meditative space for reflection, remembrance, and education through artworks and archival materials responding to September 11, 2001. Centered on six oversized photographs of Tribute in Light (2002), the exhibition invites visitors to consider the enduring impact of 9/11 and the role of art in preserving personal and collective memory.
Created by artists Julian LaVerdiere and Paul Myoda in collaboration with architects John Bennett, Gustavo Bonevardi, and Richard Nash Gould, and lighting designer Paul Marantz, Tribute in Light was first illuminated six months after the attacks. Its twin beams have since become an enduring symbol of remembrance, resilience, and renewal. Donated to the Godwin-Ternbach Museum in 2021, the six photographs, along with eight related works, are now part of the museum’s permanent collection.
The exhibition also features books, magazines, ephemera, documentary photographs, digital prints, and works responding to 9/11, including materials from MNEMONIC: A 9/11 Memorial Exhibition, organized at LaGuardia Community College in 2002. Media components include Lotus Cusp, created and produced by Professor Adele Shtern, and 102 Minutes That Changed America, produced by Siskel/Jacobs Productions for the History Channel.
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WUNDERKAMMER III:
THE LANGUAGE of THINGS
September 25, 2025 – May 29, 2026
Lobby Gallery
Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College (CUNY)
The third installment of GTM’s Wunderkammer series, The Language of Things, invites viewers to engage with the subtle and powerful voices embedded in material culture. Curated from GTM’s permanent collection, the exhibition juxtaposes the sacred with the mundane, offering a rich tapestry of human creativity, belief, and everyday life.
Spanning millennia and continents, the selected artifacts range from a 15th-century baptismal plate portraying Adam and Eve to a 1960s tramp art box crafted by a Ukrainian priest in New York, and a Ptolemaic-era figurine of Osiris. Alongside these are more ordinary but no less significant items—a brass Turkish coffee grinder, traveling hangers for stockings, and a 4,000-year-old hematite cylinder seal—each bearing the imprint of human use and memory. Together, these objects speak in the silent, tactile language of material culture. They are more than relics—they are messages preserved in form, material, and craftsmanship, resonating with the hands that made and used them.
A special feature of this iteration is a tribute to Allen Rosenbaum, long-serving GTM board member, generous donor, and proud Queens College graduate, 1958. His gift of over 200 Daruma—figures representing Bodhidharma, the 5th century founder of Zen Buddhism in Japan—adds a vibrant spiritual dimension to the exhibition. Selected Daruma pieces on view embody resilience, faith, and the enduring influence of Eastern philosophies in material form.
Support for Wunderkammer III: The Language of Things is provided by the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Kupferberg Center for the Arts, and Queens College, CUNY.
Watch the exhibition video on YouTube.
MEMORIAL TRIBUTE TO ALLEN ROSENBAUM (1937 – 2025)
September 25, 2025 – May 29, 2026
Lobby Gallery
Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College (CUNY)
The Godwin-Ternbach Museum at Queens College is honored to present a memorial tribute to Allen Rosenbaum, distinguished art historian, longtime director of the Princeton University Art Museum (Emeritus), and devoted GTM board member for over 25 years. Allen passed away on August 3 at Calvary Hospital in New York City at the age of 88.
Exhibition support is provided by the Kupferberg Center for the Arts. Education programs and initiatives are supported by the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, and public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with New York City Council.
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