Exploring the Language of Form
October 17, 2024 – May 1, 2025
Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College (CUNY)
We are excited to announce our upcoming exhibition Exploring the Language of Form. Over 80 art works and artifacts spanning 5,000 years of human experience selected from the museum’s global collection will be revealed in this exhibition. The first exhibition of its kind at the museum to focus solely on sculptural forms, works in all media including ceramic, wood, metal, fabric, ivory, feathers, glass, stone, and paper, are to be exhibited, many for the first time. Objects of spiritual or religious significance sit side-by-side with purely utilitarian objects, and often merge disparate time periods and locations. From intensely personal miniature objects such as amulets or netsuke to robust sculptural statements, variations in scale and materiality stretch the boundaries of what a 3-dimensional expression can be. Works by artists such as Andrea della Robbia, Robert Wilson, Louise Nevelson, Margot Lovejoy, Antoine-Louis Barye, John Flannagan, M. Jume, Carlo Scarpa,Claudia DeMonte, Lawrence Fane, Pat Lasch, Roy Lichtenstein, Jean Dunand, and Chaim Gross, reflect works by anonymous artisans and makers, folk and outsider artists. As viewers, we are constantly educated by examining a plethora of approaches to the creative act.
Support for the exhibitions is provided by the Friends of the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Kupferberg Center for the Arts, and Queens College, CUNY. Education programs and initiatives are supported in part by the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, and public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with NY City Council. Additional support for the care of the collection is made possible by the Pine Tree Foundation.
Press release HERE.
In the meantime, we invite you to explore our website and YouTube channel to discover our current and past exhibitions , along with related programs.
WUNDERKAMMER II: Animalia
October 17, 2024 – May 29, 2025
Lobby Gallery | Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College (CUNY)
Wunderkammer II: Animalia, a new exhibition in the Lobby Gallery, reveals a cross-cultural selection of works representing the animal world in a variety of media. Designed as visual storage, this rich selection of works demonstrates the infinite variety of the museum’s holdings. Mostly created by anonymous or unnamed artisans, an Ivory Coast, Senufo hornbill headdress portraying a stylized human face on its abdomen and a Shaman’s rattle depicting both a human figure and a raven evoke the interconnectedness of human life with the animal spirit.
Programs in conjunction with the exhibition are open to the public and the campus community. This exhibition was organized by Louise Weinberg, GTM’s co-director, director of exhibitions and collections, and curator.
Support for Wunderkammer II: Animalia is provided by the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Kupferberg Center for the Arts, and Queens College, CUNY.
Women’s History Month
March 1 – March 31, 2025
Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College (CUNY)
Margot Lovejoy (American, born Canada, 1930 – 2019)
Margot Lovejoy was a groundbreaking multidisciplinary artist and Professor Emerita of Visual Arts at State University of New York, Purchase. Originally a printmaker and photographer, her use of new technologies for installations, artists’ books and websites in the 1990s opened a discourse on how new media can directly influence social engagement. Author of Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age (Routledge, 2004) and Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media (Prentice Hall, 1997), her project TURNS www.myturningpoint.com was featured in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and is part of the Rhizome database. Lovejoy was a recipient of a 1988 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 1994 Arts International Grant in India, NYFA’s Gregory Millard Fellowship, several NYSCA grants, and the 2007 CAA Award for Distinguished Teaching of Art. She exhibited internationally at Institute for Contemporary Art Inaugural, Taiwan (2001) and featured in major exhibitions in Germany (ZKM), Reina Sofia Museum, Castello Museum and MediaLab Prado, Spain, she had many solo exhibitions in and around New York including those at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center; Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art; the Alternative Museum, and Queens Museum. Lovejoy created many artists’ books such as Labyrinth, Public Linen, and The Book of Plagues, and was a speaker at conferences on art and technology internationally.
Through the generosity of the Lovejoy Family, Godwin-Ternbach Museum now holds a significant number of works by the artist including photographs, prints, artists’ books, and lightboxes. These early works form the foundation of this important collection. Lovejoy’s archives have been shared with Special Collections & Archives, Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library, Queens College.
Image Credit: (on left) Self Portrait, circa 1950s Oil on canvas, Collection Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Courtesy Lovejoy Family, 2024.5.3 | (on right) Singing in the Foliage, circa 1970s Screenprint, Collection Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Courtesy Lovejoy Family, 2024.5.4