Exhibition

  • of [a] tomorrow: lighter than air, stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust.
    Charisse Pearlina Weston
    Artist
    Lindsey Berfond
    Curator
    Queens Museum, New York
    Oct 02, 2022 to Mar 05, 2023
  • GRANTEE
    Queens Museum
    GRANT YEAR
    2022

Ronald (“Ron”) Edward Galella, “Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) protests at the World’s Fair, opening day,” 1964 (printed 1994). Vintage silver gelatin print. Courtesy the Queens Museum

A large-scale suspended installation, from which the exhibition derives its name, loosely references Richard Serra’s 1974 sculpture, Delineator. Blocking from one end of the gallery to the next, the installation seeks to disrupt ideas of the future and nationhood articulated within Philip Johnson’s New York State Pavillon, The Tent of Tomorrow, from the 1964–65 World’s Fair, that was presented adjacent to the current home of the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. This gesture metaphorically obstructs passage into the territories espoused by Johnson and others which delimit and erase Black presence. Other sculptural works utilize archives of Black protest and resistance across time to examine how the symbolic and literal deployments of glass within the context of architecture, media, policing, and surveillance complicate Black intimacies and interiors and reify anti-Black protocols of movement and sight or seeing.

Charisse Pearlina Weston received her MFA in studio art, with critical theory emphasis, from the University of California, Irvine in 2019. She completed residencies at Abrons Art Center, the Bullseye Resource Center, and the International Curatorial and Studio Program in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been exhibited in various group shows including Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College; and The School, Jack Shainman Gallery. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Abrons Art Center, Project Row Houses, Recess, and the Moody Center of the Arts at Rice University. She received a research grant from the Graham Foundation in 2021. She was a 2019 Dedalus Foundation Fellow in Painting and Sculpture. She is the recipient of the Museum of Art and Design (MAD)’s 2021 Burke Prize and was also a 2021 MAD Artist Fellow.

Lindsey Berfond is an assistant curator at the Queens Museum, where she has organized and supported a wide range of exhibitions and public programming with artists, thinkers, cultural producers, and communities. She has cocurated Queens International 2016, the seventh iteration of the museum’s biannual exhibition of Queens-based artists, and recently curated Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship exhibitions by Alexandria Smith and Asif Mian. Berfond earned her bachelor’s degree in art history from New York University and her master’s degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. She has contributed to exhibitions and other programming at institutions such as Art in General, NURTUREart, and SculptureCenter.

Hitomi Iwasaki joined Queens Museum in 1996 and has worked on numerous landmark exhibitions including Cai Guo-Qiang, 1997; Out of India: Contemporary Indian Art from Diaspora, 1997; and Global Conceptualism, 1999; and initiated site-specific artist projects that later developed into longer-term residency and fellowship programs. She organized Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, 2012, in collaboration with El Museo del Barrio and The Studio Museum in Harlem. While she has curated a number of the past Queens International exhibitions (2002–16) and is versed in local art scenes, her work also focuses on conceptually driven site-specific artist projects with local and international artists. She has recently completed projects by Patty Chang, Mariam Ghani, Anna K. E, Ronny Quevedo, and Sable Elyse Smith. She received the International Association of Art Critics’ Best Project in a Public Space Award, 2009–10, for her project with Duke Riley.

Kimaada Le Gendre is the director of education at Queens Museum. Le Gendre has fourteen years of experience leading, organizing, and creating youth and teen programs in the metropolitan NYC and upstate NY area, ranging from social activism, community building and environmental education. At Queens Museum, she develops and implements programming for schools, youth, teens, families, and adults. She holds a bachelor’s in English from Hunter College, a master’s in environmental law and policy from Vermont Law School, and four certificates from Cornell University ranging from urban environmental education to climate change science.

Adrianne Koteen is currently Queens Museum's curator of public practice, previously served as the interim director of public programs and community engagement at Queens Museum in 2016, and again from 2018–19. She has worked in curatorial capacities at Queens Museum assisting then curator Larissa Harris on Do you want the cosmetic version or do you want the real deal?: Los Angeles Poverty Department (1985–2014), and cocurating the Arte Útil Lab (2013). Her curatorial and programmatic experience includes positions within the Curatorial Department of Public Programs, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and the Contemporary Art Curatorial Department at the Brooklyn Museum; as the manager of public programs at Friends of the High Line; program director at Fotovision; and project manager with The International Museum of Women.

Lynn Maliszewski, is archives and collections manager at Queens Museum, she cares for and manages objects related to the 1939–40 and 1964–65 New York Worlds’ Fairs, the museum’s art collection, and our institutional history. Before joining the museum she was an associate director at Callicoon Fine Arts. She has worked in an archival capacity at Andrea Rosen Gallery, Primary Information, and Printed Matter, all in New York City. Maliszewski is an experienced editor and has written for BOMB and The Brooklyn Rail, among others, with an emphasis on artists’ books and archival projects.

Sally Tallant was appointed president and executive director of the Queens Museum in April 2019. From 2011–18, she was the director of Liverpool Biennial. She has delivered large-scale exhibitions and commissions. She has also developed an interdisciplinary approach and has commissioned ambitious music and performance programs including a new work by Michael Nyman in 2014. From 2001–11 she was head of programs at the Serpentine Gallery, London, where she was responsible for the development and delivery of an integrated program of exhibitions, architecture, education, and public programs. She has curated exhibitions in a wide range of contexts including the Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, hospitals, and schools, as well as public commissions. She has also curated performances, sound events, film programs, and conferences including initiating the Park Nights series in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions and cocurating the Serpentine Gallery Marathon series with Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Founded in 1972, Queens Museum is dedicated to presenting the highest quality visual arts and educational programming for people in the New York metropolitan area, and particularly for the residents of Queens—a uniquely diverse and international community. We fulfill this mission by designing and providing art exhibitions, public programs, and educational experiences that promote the appreciation and enjoyment of art, support the creative efforts of artists, and enhance quality of life through interpreting, collecting, and exhibiting art, architecture, and design. The artistic and educational programs and exhibitions we provide directly relate to the contemporary urban life of local communities, while maintaining the highest standards of professional, intellectual, and ethical responsibility. Housed in the last remaining structure built for the 1939 World’s Fair, the history of which, like that of the museum itself, mirrors that of both the city and the United States from the Great Depression to the present.