FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.queenscourier.com APRIL 17, 2014 • THE QUEENS COURIER 39 world’s fair Andy Warhol (re)lives in Flushing Meadows Corona Park On April 15, 1964, pop artist/provocateur Andy Warhol unveiled his commissioned World’s Fair exhibit, 13 Most Wanted Men, on the side of the New York State Pavilion, not far from where Queens Theatre currently sits in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. To create this piece, Warhol enlarged silkscreen mug shots from a 1962 NYPD booklet on some of the era’s most notorious criminals. He tiled them together into a square, creating a chessboard of front and profi le views of the fugitives, who were at large at the time. Other prints mocked Robert Moses, president of the World’s Fair Corporation. Warhol won the battle, as a scandal ensued, embarrassing Moses, the other event organizers and even Philip Johnson, the NYS Pavilion’s architect. However, the Pittsburghborn artist lost the war three days later, when Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the mural to be destroyed. The NYS Pavilion quickly got a fresh coat of paint where the mural had been, and fair attendees saw nothing but a large silver square there. Well, now it appears that Warhol, who died in Manhattan in 1987, will get the last laugh. On April 27, 2014, the Queens Museum will unveil Andy Warhol’s 13 Most Wanted Men and the 1964 World’s Fair, a display that includes images from a follow-up exhibit that Warhol launched with mug shots from the original series and other pieces, such as some from his Most Beautiful Boys work. The new exhibit, which was developed in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, will run through Sept. 7. The opening reception will be on April 26 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. with an after-party from 8 p.m. until midnight at Queens Museum. This article is part of a series by the Queens Tourism Council that will run in The Queens Courier all summer in commemoration of the 75th and 50th anniversaries of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs, which took place in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. For more information on local commemorative events, go to www.itsinqueens.com/worldsfair. but then he gets up and gives a speech,” Dworkin remembered of the new “audio-animatronics” technology. According to nywf64.com, Disney’s animated fi gure recited excerpts of Lincoln’s speeches and was “capable of more than 250,000 combinations of actions, including gestures, smiles and frowns; the facial features were taken from Lincoln’s life mask.” Dworkin also recalls the “People Wall” at the IBM pavilion: “There was stadium seating, at we sat in the audience. Then, the whole audience gets lifted into a theater 20 feet above ground” for a multiscreen show explaining how the human mind and computers work in similar ways. For this year’s celebrations, Dworkin said, “I’d love to see a tour — I don’t know if they have one — taking you around the grounds showing where things used to be in the 1964 World’s Fair.” WORLD’S FAIR SUBMISSIONS CALL Did you or someone you know attend the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park? If yes, The Queens Courier is asking you to share your memorabilia and/or memories with us to commemorate the event’s 50th anniversary this April. You could win a dinner for two. Please email your entries to editorial@queenscourier.com with the subject line “World’s Fair Anniversary” or to Editorial, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361. Note: All photos/items become property of The Queens Courier. Photo courtesy of reader Dean Psomiades / Photo by Bill Psomiades Photo courtesy of reader Dean Psomiades Photo by Bill Psomiades Photo courtesy of the Greater Astoria Historical Society.
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