Made a trip to the recently re-titled Queens Museum (sans Art) this past weekend for their closing ‘International’ event day. When routing through Flushing Meadows-Corona Park I always like to take the extra stop and go visit the mosaics at the Willets Point-Shea Stadium station (some still call it that). There are works by Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, and they’re generally just awesome to look at.
A couple years back on one of those such trips with my friend Ashley (in town from St. Louis) we saw a parks person sweeping near the mosaics. Sweeping is nothing special, but the sweeping was producing a strange ‘clankity clank’ sound. Upon further observation we realized the person was sweeping up loose mosaic tiles, that apparently came loose either due to weather, general wear & tear, or vandalism it wasn’t clear. After all these mosaics had been there for decades – why suddenly did all these tiles come loose?
Whatever the reason, fast-forward a few years and here are the results. A terrible patch job:
‘Venus’ by Salvador Dali; note the patch in the upper-right part of the seal, seen below.
Detail of the Salvador Dali bad patch.
Thankfully the Great Hall mosaic didn’t appear to have any patch problems.
The New York Pavilion, now the Queens Museum, has a terrible patch job, seen below.
Ughhh.
Did I mention upon realizing the parks person was sweeping up mosaics that me and Ashley walked around and picked up as many as we could find? Yup, have a special bag full of Worlds Fair mosaic tiles in my possession. Wouldn’t be surprised if you scoured the land there you could probably still find some too.