Campus Collage

Queens College Art Museum

By MICHAEL REHAK

Getting Started

One of Roberta Crown’s marine-inspired pieces for “Wiggle & Wave,” showing Sept. 8-Oct. 27.

As you make your way onto the Queens College campus, the Rosenthal Library is set among some of the school’s most notable buildings, just outside the clock tower honoring the three Civil Rights activists that were murdered in the 1960s – which you can see from almost anywhere on campus. As you enter the library, getting to the art museum is as simple as leaving your I.D. with security and taking the elevator to the sixth floor.

As the elevator doors open, you can see the college’s collection of art books, which fills a number of rows on the floor. Those looking to study art history by way of the book can take in (or check out) volumes of works. Also on the sixth floor, you’ll find the college’s current exhibition. The glassed-in semicircle that surrounds the museum features dual collections by painter Roberta Crown and sculptor Barbara Lubliner.

Digging In

As you travel around the museum, you will see Crown’s sea-inspired paintings that line the walls and Lubliner’s welded metal sculptures sitting atop pedestals. Together, the paintings and sculptures make up the “Wiggle & Wave” exhibit, which officially opens Sept. 8 and runs through Oct. 27.

As a 1970 Queens College graduate, Crown has been featured throughout the United States and abroad. As the recipient of the Mary Karasick and the Leila Sawyer Memorial Awards, Crown is also the executive coordinator of the Women in the Arts Foundation. Her inspiration for the Queens College exhibit was found on a visit to New Mexico. For her artwork she recreated an area that was once an ocean-connected, inland salt lake inhabited by whales.

The ideas for the pieces were formulated after going on a research trip to the Whale Foundation on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

Lubliner, whose training came from Boston University and the National Academy of Design, welded her works from found metal that either moves, wiggles or vibrates. Her interactive works invite a hands-on approach.

Finishing Up

On Thursday, Sept. 22, both artists will give a free gallery talk from 5 to 6 p.m., and a free illustrated lecture will be offered on Wednesday, Oct. 19, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m.

Queens College Art Museum
Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library
65-30 Kissena Blvd.
Flushing, N.Y. 11367

9 a.m.-8 p.m., Mon.-Thu.;

9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Fri.