New York City Panorama Exhibit Reopens
BY ANN SOUKERAS

The largest architectural scale model in the world, the Panorama of New York City, housed at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, was unveiled on Sunday, February 4, after undergoing an extensive updating. The unveiling of the newly renovated Panorama marked the opening of a three-part exhibit on the life work of Robert Moses, a controversial urban planner who, in the first half of the twentieth century, was responsible for most of the bridges, parks, highways and public housing in the city of New York. Almost a thousand visitors and dignitaries eager to see the updated Panorama, including Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, attended the gala reopening.

The exhibit, collectively entitled "Robert Moses and the Modern City", is being shown in three different places. "Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Road to Recreation" is on view at the Queens Museum of Art, a building built by Moses for the 1939 World's Fair. This exhibit documents Moses' monumental work in reclaiming the shorefront for beaches, constructing parks and swimming pools and building bridges and parkways with extensive landscaping. "Robert Moses and the Modern City: Remaking the Metropolis" can be seen at the Museum of the City of New York and "Robert Moses and the Modern City: Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution" is being shown at Columbia University's Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery.

The Panorama, commissioned by Moses for the 1964 World's Fair, was constructed by the architectural firm of Lester and Associates. A team of 200 architects worked for three years to complete the Panorama and place it on view in the room that was home to the General Assembly of the United Nations from 1946 to 1950 while the permanent headquarters of the United Nations was under construction in Manhattan. The 9,335- square-foot model shows all five boroughs of New York City on a scale of one inch to 100 feet. It was last updated in 1992 and includes the bridges, roadways, parks and 895,000 buildings that comprised the city at that time. The World Trade Center still stands where it did in 1992. Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the Queens Museum of Art, envisions future updates to include many new structures and roadways as well as the new buildings to be constructed on the site of the World Trade Center. Raising funds for such a project would be daunting and such updates would be a monumental undertaking, requiring input from many architectural firms currently involved in designing actual buildings in the city.

The Panorama has been closed to the public since September while David Lackey and a team from Whirlwind Design worked on a massive lighting and media effect upgrade at a cost of $750,000. This upgrade was funded by the City Council, the Mayor's Office, the Office of the Queens Borough President and the state Assembly. Every hour on the hour, a 12-minute tour of the model city that includes lighting effects and informational films projected on screens throughout the room where the Panorama is housed can be seen.

"The thing I love about the Panorama is that you don't have to know anything about contemporary art. You don't even have to speak English to enjoy the experience. One thing we all have in common is that we love the city," Finkelpearl said.

The Panorama can also be used as a "memory map". Visitors can look at the model and remember when they lived in a particular neighborhood or worked on a certain block. But while several visitors to the museum have expressed an urge to reach out and touch the model, touching it or walking on it is out of the question. For example, one misstep could wipe out The Bronx.