LIC’s Hidden Secret

The Fisher Landau Center For Art

By Josh Parish

Getting Started

Barbara Krueger’s take on gender, the baby boom – and muscles. Tribune Photo by Ira Cohen

If you’re an art lover and haven’t found your way out to the Fisher Landau Center For Art, consider yourself properly rebuked. As contemporary art collections go, the museum may be overshadowed—and out-hyped—by neighborhood tough guy P.S.1, but Fisher Landau’s permanent cache of masterworks is one not to be missed.

And it’s completely free.

Emily Fisher Landau, the museum’s founder, purchased the bulk of the artwork from the artists themselves early in their careers. Most of the museum’s 1,100 pieces are from 1960 or later, and running down the list of works inside is like reading the syllabus for a contemporary art survey course.

The museum gives only a little extra attention to works done on canvas, so photography, sculpture and paintings share and share alike in the building’s 25,000 square feet. Old hats like James Rosenquist, Jasper Johns, Kiki Smith, and Robert Rauschenburg are represented—so are new bloods like Matthew Barney. Andy Warhol’s portrait of Fisher Landau herself greets visitors as they enter the front lobby.

Fisher Landau opened the museum in 1991. For more than ten years, she kept the works inside on view by appointment only; the museum changed to scheduled hours two years ago.

Parking isn’t provided at The Fisher Landau Center For Art, and strict parking regulations on the neighborhood streets can make finding a spot tough.

If you’re subway bound, which is probably wise, catch the N or W train to the 39th Ave./Beebe stop. At the corner of 31st Street and 39th Avenue, walk one block west on 39th Avenue, then turn right onto 30th Street. (Be sure to remember the W train only runs on weekends.)

Enter the Center through the gates on 30th Street, and start in. If you have the spare change, give a donation at the door to support this local arts institution.

If you don’t, well, don’t—did we mention it’s free?

Digging In

Parking is limited around The Fisher Landau Center For Art. Your best bet is to leave the car at home and hit the subway. Tribune Photo by Ira Cohen

As you wander through the lobby and the rest of the museum, take a gander at the architecture. The building was once an old parachute harness factory; the Center was designed by Max Gordon, the same architect who designed Charles Saatchi’s widely admired gallery in London.

Fisher Landau claimed one of the main reasons she created the Center was to give herself a serene location in which to view her collection, and it shows. For its size, the museum has more open space and natural light than nearly any other in Queens.

Stroll through the three floors of galleries at a leisurely pace, and let the art sink in—the bare, square rooms act like a freshly gessoed canvas for the work itself.

Like the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, another Long Island City gem, Fisher Landau foregoes title plaques on the pieces in its collection. Instead, like Noguchi, it has leaflets with information about each piece that visitors can carry as they go. At Fisher Landau, you’ll find the leaflets at the door of each gallery.

The walls of the first-floor gallery are filled nearly exclusively with paintings. The Center’s library, which holds two large paintings by Cy Twombly and Ed Ruscha, is next to the gallery, but you’re likely to find it roped off—the space isn’t open to the public. (If you’re intent on seeing the pieces, feel free to ask someone at the front desk. The staff will likely go out of their way to let you have a peek.)

The second floor holds the Center’s collection of photographs. It’s another peacefully stark, sunlit space, which may be why the museum keeps such early hours—seeing the works without sunlight just wouldn’t be the same experience.

Finishing Up

Emily Fisher Landau bought most of the museum’s collection from the artists themselves. Tribune Photo by Ira Cohen

Fisher Landau’s third and final gallery is inhabited mainly by paintings, but you’ll find some pleasant surprises, like the Kiki Smith sculpture sitting in the middle of the empty room. Don’t skip the easy-to-miss Rauschenburg, from his Salvage Series, in the hallway just outside the room’s entrance, either.

And while you’re visiting the Center, keep an eye out for Ms. Fisher Landau herself; the prolific patron is said to treat the museum as her living room away from home.

The Fisher Landau Center For Art
38-27 30th St.,
Long Island City
(718) 937-0727
www.flcart.org

Noon-5 p.m. Thu.-Mon.

FREE, donations accepted.