Flushing, Queens: The Rocket Thrower – Robert Moses, the 1964/65 World’s Fair, and Art in the Space Age

The Space Age was a time of bewildering change, yet also of great optimism about the future. Conceived at a time of general consensus in 1958 and designed to celebrate and promote the U.S. entry into the Space Age, the 1964/65 Fair opened instead amidst the turbulent conflicts of the Mid-Sixties. Robert Moses’s presidency of the World’s Fair Corporation became another flash-point for the conflicts emerging in the spheres of civil rights, planning, architecture, and art in New York. Donald De Lue’s sculpture The Rocket Thrower illustrates the conflicts between Moses’s conservative aesthetic, the press, and the changing culture of the 1960’s. Explore the “space age” art and architecture that survives in Flushing Meadows today which recalls those times and their contradictory currents.

This tour is part of a weeklong festival celebrating the Rocket Thrower. The statue is included in the MAS’s Adopt-A-Monument program which through private funding conserves and maintains works of public art. The Rocket Thrower is the last of 36 outdoor monuments in this program waiting to be restored.

Date: Sunday May 6, 2012

Time: 12:00pm-2:00pm

Event Start/End: The East side of the Unisphere, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, opposite the Queens Museum of Art

Hosts: John Kriskiewicz, with John Krawchuk

Registration: No need to sign up, just show up at the posted meeting location.

Accessibility: Fully Accessible