Although Tom Finkelpearl currently holds the position of commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), it is important to trace the career that led Mayor Bill DeBlasio to tap him for this position in 2014. Raised in Massachusetts and a sculptor by training, Tom Finkelpearl has worked in key city positions in the arts: as a public affairs officer for PS1, Executive Director for the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, as well as previously with DCLA in the 1990s managing the public art Percent for Art Program. But, almost without a doubt, Tom Finkelpearl is best known for his 12 years of service as the visionary director of the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
Brian Zegeer’s artist studio in the Queens Museum, showing objects for the upcoming parade thematizing the displaced neighborhood Little Syria
(Photo Karen Li-Lun Hwang)
Much of Finkelpearl’s vision can be gleaned from the seemingly insignificant decision to change the city museum’s name from “Queens Museum of Art” to the more approachable “Queens Museum”. As a museum serving Queens, Finkelpearl strongly believed it should reflect the diversity and cultural needs of the population. Art critic Holland Cotter writes of Queens in his article, “The Expanded Queens Museum Reopens”: “The United Nations of voices we encounter on Manhattan’s streets is global but transient. Visitors from abroad come to town and they look, they shop, they leave. By contrast, the same range of accents we hear in Queens is global but local. People land from everywhere and stay, in one of the most ethnically diverse patches of residential real estate in the nation.” Under his leadership, the museum’s programs began to recognize the changed landscape of Queens as home to many new immigrant populations, launching exhibitions and projects such as Nexus: Taiwan in Queens in 2004, an exhibition of contemporary Taiwanese artists, both in the U.S. and in Taiwan, and Crossing the BLVD, a multi-media performance collaboration between Warren Lehrer and artist Judith Sloan based on the oral histories of immigrants and refugees living in Queens. He consciously brought in new staff of diverse backgrounds in order to bring the museum in conversation with its many audiences. The museum also began engaging in wide-ranging partnerships from the Queens Library and Queens College, to community-based organizations like the Indo-American Arts Council and the Latino LGBT film organization CINEMAROSA, in order to create more fluid dialog throughout the community. Other endeavors initiated during his time at the Queens Museum reflect Finkelpearl’s personal commitment to participatory art and art as social practice, like the selection of Queens-based artists for the recent artist studio program. One studio is reserved for the museum’s partnership with Queens College, offering a place of work and artistic exchange for Queens College MFA students engaged in social practice.
Queens Museum of Art before the renovation, 2008
(Photo by Jim Henderson, public domain)
The renovated Queens Museum, seen from back entrance, now identical to the remodeled front, creating an open, well-lit interior
(Photo courtesy of Brian Zegeer)
Possibly the most visible translation of Tom Finkelpearl’s commitment to expand the museum’s relevancy was the high-profile renovation of the museum itself. When the museum originally opened in 1972, it occupied one-half of the stately modern classical pavilion that had been built for the 1939 World’s Fair. The museum’s $69 million renovation began in 2009 and was completed in 2013. It includes an increase in exhibition space by 50,000 sq. ft. (it now also occupies the other half of the building, formerly occupied by an ice skating rink) and a redesign that dramatically alters the museum’s relationship to its surroundings. The solid backside facing the Grand Central Parkway has been replaced by glass and includes an entrance identical to the newly designed front. The overall effect is open and inviting, allowing a clear view of the museum’s interior. For the reopening in 2013, the museum exhibited a series of time-lapsed photos of the renovation by Queens-based Taiwanese artist Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao.
Tom Finkelpearl speaks on the Comprehensive Cultural Panel, 2014
(Photo courtesy of Robert Lee, AAAC)
Tom Finkelpearl’s legacy as director of the Queens Museum in Flushing will surely have a lasting effect on the borough of Queens. The programs implemented under his watch continue, and it was only with great deliberation that he accepted the mayor’s offer, weighing the importance of strengthening the Queens Museum’s partnerships and programs he initiated, many of them still very young, against the role he can play for the city when allied with a mayor who shares many of his ideals. Whether he will be able to apply these principles on a grander scale for all five boroughs remains to be seen. But already there are clear signs he is pushing the conversation in this direction. With programs like the diversity initiative for NYC’s cultural institutions and his work to help enable all city residents across economic lines to benefit from NYC’s cultural offerings through IDNYC, New York City may witness a new era of cultural access and equity.
–Karen Li-Lun Hwang
Suggested resources
Finkelpearl, T. (2001). Dialogues in public art. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Published in 2001, Dialogues in Public Art is a compilation of interviews conducted by Tom Finkelpearl with artists, administrators, art critics and organizers, and beneficiaries of public art. Finkelpearl interviews influential figures, like Vito Acconci, Mel Chin, Douglas Crimp, Maya Lin, and Rick Lowe to examine the role of public art, for example, its successes and consequences through programs like Percent for Art programs in many urban centers that began in the 70s. The book is divided into four sections: Controversies in Public Art, Experiments in Public Art as Architecture and Urban Planning, Dialogues on Dialogue-Based Public Art Projects, and Public Art for Public Health.
Preview on ebrary:
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/alltitles/docDetail.action?docID=10229588
Finkelpearl, T. (2011 Apr 9). “The freedom of the city: Models of urban engagement and creativity in the 21st Century”. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ7jlHTDiUU
“The Freedom of the City: Models of Urban Engagement and Creativity in the 21st Century” is a recording of Tom Finkelpearl’s presentation at SMU Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas, Texas in 2011. 20 minutes in length, Finkelpearl discusses in detail how the Queens Museum has rethought its programming to connect with the community it serves, offer relevant art and social programs, and create opportunities for engagement, learning, and exchange. His slide presentation shows numerous examples of art and projects.
Finkelpearl, T. (2013). What we made: Conversations on art and social cooperation. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation is a second compilation of interviews by Tom Finkelpearl. In this book, Finkelpearl interviews artists whose practice is situated in modes of social cooperation and social engagement: art as activism, art as co-authorship, participation as art production. The book includes 15 interviews with artists and participants/collaborators.
References
Cotter, H. (2013 Nov 8). “The expanded Queens Museum reopens”. New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/arts/design/the-expanded-queens-museum-reopens.html
Finkelpearl, T. (2013). What we made: Conversations on art and social cooperation. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Pogrebin, R. (2014 Apr 6). “Museum director to be Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Mayor de Blasio names Tom Finkelpearl of the Queens Museum”. New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/arts/design/mayor-de-blasio-names-tom-finkelpearl-of-the-queens-museum.html?_r=0
Scileppi, T. (2012 Feb 18). “Redefining the Queens art scene”. Times Ledger.
http://www.timesledger.com/stories/2012/7/qmaexpansion_all_2012_02_16_q.html
–Karen Li-Lun Hwang
Researching NYC: Past and Present 