What do Marcel Duchamp, Karl Lagerfeld, Louis Armstrong, Fairfield Porter, Yoko Ono, Jacques Villon, Roy Lichtenstein, Alice Neel, Oscar de la Renta, Kara Walker, Robert Wilson, Andy Warhol and Louise Nevelson have in common? They’re all rubbing shoulders in THE GIFT: Queens College Collects exhibition.
THE GIFT is an initiative of Queens College (QC) School of Arts highlighting the infinite variety of the college’s holdings brought together for the first time since the college’s founding in 1937. QC instituted a program of collecting art from the 1930s through the 1950s, primarily through the generosity of donors. Originally held by QC Library, many acquisitions migrated to Godwin-Ternbach Museum (GTM), founded in 1981. GTM’s illustrious founders, Dr. Frances Gray Godwin, and Joseph Ternbach, attracted distinguished collectors and donors, and were dedicated to passing on their mutual passion for art and history to generations of young students.
Organized by GTM, this exhibition represents a remarkable opportunity for collaboration amongst the college’s entities. THE GIFT explores works from Queens College Fashion and Textile Collection, Queens College Art Department, Louis Armstrong House Museum, Queens College Art Library and Special Collections and Archives, Daghlian Collection of Chinese Art, and GTM. These specialized archives and collections represent selections from a percentage of the entire holdings of QC.
We invite you to wonder at juxtapositions of medium and purpose in pairings of cultures and styles from collection to collection. You’ll experience little seen rare and avant-garde artists’ books, stunning examples of garments from lounging pajamas to couture evening gowns, modernist and contemporary paintings and prints, Chinese antiquities, handmade collaged boxes and scrapbooks, and engaging sculptural objects.
THE GIFT is a companion piece to our accompanying exhibition in the Lobby Gallery, Wunderkammer I: Material Pleasures, highlighting the vast diversity of GTM’s collection told through objects from the quotidian to the ecclesiastical, realized in ivory, metal, glass, stone, wood, and ceramic.
This exhibition has been organized by Louise Weinberg, Co-Director, Director of Exhibitions/Collections, and Curator.
For a list of Public Programs presented in conjunction with the exhibition, please click HERE.
This exhibition is funded in part by the Friends of the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Kupferberg Center for the Arts, and Queens College, CUNY. Educational 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.