QUEENS, NY.- The Queens Museum of Art hosts two exhibitions on the legacy of the 1964/65 World’s Fair: Anthony Auerbach, Empire State Pavilion, on view January 27, 2008-May 4, 2008 and the documentary exhibition Back on the Map: Revisiting the New York State Pavilion at the 1964/65 World’s Fair.

Auerbach’s Installation, Empire State Pavilion reflects on one of the most memorable features of the World’s Fair: the Texaco Road Map of New York State. Like the New York City Pavilion (now home to the QMA), which housed The Panorama of the City of New York, the New York State Pavilion contained a miniature representation of the whole state in the form of a giant road map inlaid in the terrazzo floor. While the Panorama has been preserved and updated over the years, the terrazzo map became derelict and overgrown. Prior to the recent conservation project of the Texaco Road Map (as shown in Back on the Map), Auerbach made a complete documentation of the entire surface of the Map. Adopting aerial photographic techniques as used by geologists, archaeologists, cartographers and spies, Auerbach recorded the state of New York from a height of seven feet. His aerial survey resulted in some 2,500 detailed images of a map turning back into a landscape.

Half-way between a surveyor’s office and a peep show, Auerbach’s installation invites the viewer to look–to inspect and decipher the material preserved in the artist’s photographic archive. The installation comprises 3 works configuring the archive material in different ways. Emperor Panorama, 2007 consists of 6 light-tables. On each stands a magnifying stereoscope offering a minutely-detailed, three-dimensional view. The State of New York, 2006 is a fake projection of the interior of the NYS Pavilion showing the survey in process. In addition, an untitled video projection shows the antique city-states and former colonial capitals which can be found upstate: Mycenae, Troy, Athens, Rome, London, Paris and Berlin, to name a few.

The project speculates on how history is recorded–in traces and inscriptions–and how it is erased. As Auerbach suggests, “The map is memorable because it remained after the rest of the Fair was demolished. Exposed, shattered by frost and colonized by plants, the map marked the time and prompted feelings for the past. Ironically, the first thing the conservators did was sweep away nearly all the history which my survey recorded.”

Please join us on Sunday, January 27, 2008 from 3-6pm for the opening of Anthony Auerbach, Empire State Pavilion and the companion exhibition Back on the Map: Revisiting the New York State Pavilion at the 1964/65 World’s Fair.

Anthony Auerbach is supported in part by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.

Back on the Map is supported by The National Endowment for the Arts, The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania.