The Queens museum is a horrific waste of taxpayer money. There are hardly any visitors, and the exhibits border on political propaganda - never mind the director's comments. There's a huge opportunity to make this beautiful space actually useful as a NY cultural institution, and nobody cares to do so.
8
"Five percent of her staff members are DACA recipients, or Dreamers, as they are known, and the museum is operating in a borough where about 91,000 undocumented immigrants are eligible for DACA, the highest of New York City’s five boroughs."
91,000 illegal immigrant "children" - and tens of thousands more parents and extended families - in a single borough. All of them showing contempt for this country's laws and borders, not paying income tax, using fake IDs, driving around without drivers licenses or auto insurance. It goes on and on. And their clueless enablers like Ms. Raicovich wonder what made people vote for Donald Trump in 2016.
9
It's a shame the Queens Museum doesn't feel the same about people with hearing loss. Years ago, I met with the then Director and now Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, Tom Finkelpearl about the lack of hearing access available at the museum's service desks and for its video installations including but not limited to induction loops and captioning. The museum undertook a major renovation and seems to have forgotten about people with hearing loss. Perhaps if the staff included people with hearing loss, it might have remembered them...
It is shameful that City dollars were used to renovate a museum and only selective hearing access was chosen if access was a menu to pick and choose. The ADA was passed 27 years ago and it is time the museum acknowledged people with hearing loss and Tom Finkelpearl and the QMA began advocating for people with hearing loss, the forgotten disability.
Janice Schacter Lintz CEO/Founder Hearing Access & Innovations
3
Unless you are here legally, you are not an immigrant. Art owes us the right language.
7
How sad that she couldn't hire AMericans first
6
Have you ever been to Queens? It's the most diverse borough in the country. More than 40% of the people in it were born in other countries, and over 160 languages are spoken here. That might be your idea of hell, but it's mine of America.
7
Sounds like one of the few museums that is focused on its surrounding community than on enthralling major potential donors and their reach for what they imagine to be elite "standards" in art/culture/history, and their naming of such collections, highly regarded by those considering themselves part of the cultural elite.
That is a living responsive museum rather than an ossified shell intent on having magazine writers rather than real people extol its virtues.
5
As a Queens resident, I'm thrilled to see the revitalization of the museum, with excellent new exhibits and performances as well as old favorites (like the panorama!)
5
The Queens Museum is publicly funded and housed in city owned buildings. They are also a non profit organization. Neutrality with regard to lobbying and political activity is the law.
Ms Raicovich would do better at a privately funded organization or Queens Museum could give up its non profit status.
11
My own politics are liberal, but when I go to a museum, i like to be able to focus on the art, and leave politics on the doorstep. One of the many bad things about the election of President Trump is that everybody seems compelled to talk politics, politics, politics all the time, and this gets just as tedious if the politics being talked are liberal as it does if they are conservative.
19
So you're saying that art shouldn't be political?
5
Queens Museum of Art has been celebrating and championing lesser-known, adventurous and challenging artists for quite a while. While overshadowed by bigger name institutions like the Met and MOMA, QMA has been a kind of outpost of edgy, contemporary art where one might not expect it (ie, not Manhattan), and has carved a respectable, unique niche in the city’s art scene. That the museum leadership is rising to the occasion of this troubling era with thoughtful, controversial and inspiring installations and events is a wonderful thing to see.
10
I love the Queens Museum and the transformation it has undergone over the last decade. And I really appreciate the outlook that the new director has on politics and art. Hopefully, the rental hall investigation they are doing shows no harm meant to anyone.
7
Good for her!
3
Non-profit museums are institutions whose first mission is working in the public trust, to be accountable, and reach diverse audiences and their constituents. Ms. Raicovich embodies everything we strive for in the contemporary museum and in the profession. Those who call for her resignation remind me of Rudy Guliani's misplaced outrage over the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition, "Sensation" some years ago, which he hadn't even viewed before he went on a tirade and threatened to withdraw support from the museum. Museums need to stand their ground in the face of such criticism and lead with courage of conviction in American intellectual life. I say bravo to Ms. Raicovich.
11
Milton Friedman said "You can have either a welfare system or open borders, but not both." I think that is still pretty true.
12
Since the United States doesn't have open borders what's your point?
3
Your hero Donald Trump favors ending the "welfare system" (since you probably think health insurance for working people is a hand-out) while claiming to seal the border, which is a physical impossibility (I guessing neither of you took physics or geography in high school or college).
2
“To be a responsible citizen in a democracy, one has to be involved in a kind of civic engagement,” she added. “Culture has a huge role to play in that. And museums have a huge role to play in that.”
I'll be curious to see the reader comments to this article. I played a part in civic engagement as part of the Occupy movement in 2011. For that, I was excoriated and blacklisted by NPR, even though I wasn't an NPR employee nor an NPR contractor nor receiving a dime from NPR. Apparently all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
13
Lisa Simeone, good to see your name. You were a victim of injustice, and I'm sorry for what happened to you. Keep up the good fight!
4
I read a little about your issue with NPR, Lisa, and think both sides have good arguments. Your show had nothing to do with politics, and it is reasonable to think that even journalists have the right to citizen action in their private lives.
At the same time, I can understand why NPR, as a publicly-funded broadcaster, would want to distance itself from personalities who take a public stand on divisive issues. I doubt that they would ever hire Michael Moore as a producer, for example. To this day I remain disgusted that ABC allows George Stephanopoulos to masquerade as an impartial journalist when we all know he isn't. The same conflict may be at play in this article, where the museum director is in some measure a public employee.
For the record, I supported the Occupy movement. But I also think that real activism has always come with risks, such as boycotts, loss of friends and jobs, etc., and that's what sometimes makes it such a courageous act.
If I were in your shoes, I would likely feel bitter towards NPR too. I hope you feel the sacrifice was worth it, however, and I wish you the best.
3
DZ, the point is that I *WASN'T* an NPR employee at the time. I wasn't an NPR employee, nor were any of the shows I was hosting NPR shows.
6