Collection Spotlight: The Panorama Archives

The Panorama of the City of New York was updated yearly after the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair until New York City's fiscal crisis began in the mid-1970s. Between 1992 and 1994, The Panorama underwent its first major renovation. The restoration was newsworthy and prompted a segment on Crosswalks Television Network, a city-owned station. The film currently on-view in the Rubin Gallery contains footage captured by the Crosswalks team as an ode to this significant milestone in The Panorama's legacy. Behind-the-scenes footage of the restoration and interviews with staff at the Queens Museum and Lester Associates, the firm responsible for the creation and update of the model, provide unprecedented insight into the building and maintenance of this remarkable object. In the adjacent gallery, architectural plans and preparatory renderings of the original Panorama reveal how much the object and its relation to the viewer has changed.