This is one monster cleanup job.
The Queens Museum's famous panorama is undergoing an annual deep clean. This is the culmination of two weeks of meticulous work plucking chewed gum, thrown receipts, and candy wrappers from the streets of large models across the Big Apple.
With a vacuum on her back and surgical boots on her feet, art prepper Yezica Tutic carefully stepped into Midtown and Central Park on Tuesday, cleaning up a year's worth of dust and debris between small buildings. I did.
“For the first time, I felt like Godzilla,” Tootich, 37, of Ridgewood, told the Post.
Tutic is one of the three trusted art preparations that the museum calls for a deep cleaning of the panorama every year.
It took about 90 hours to scrutinize the 9,335-square-foot model, which features 895,000 teen buildings, Tinier cars, delicate bridges, and constantly flying miniature airplanes.
The panorama is the jewel in the museum's crown. Dedicated the first published work after 30 years A history of magnificent works.
“Panorama Our visitors can position themselves in the city in a completely unique way. You are imagining your cumulative set of memories on it, in it, and attached to it.”
About 80% of the museum's visitors trek through the meadows of Corona Park to get a glimpse of the miniature city. This means that not only piles of dust remain throughout the year, but also a lot of garbage left by tourists.
“This time we didn't have to collect anything so big,” said Tutic, who is originally from Argentina.
“For the first time, there was sticky candy thrown in there, gum, lots of paper receipts, etc. This time, it's amazing how little trash people do to Panorama. I'm proud of the people, that's good to see.
If scaling wasn't difficult enough, the age of mini-cities is making the job much harder, Tutic said. Sixty-year-old urban planning tools cannot handle water-based supplies. This causes the paint to completely erode paints used to depict houses, parks, transportation, etc.
The adhesive has also completely fallen apart from some pieces, making them fragile to break with the lightest of touches.
“We walk very slowly because it's a very old structure. Some of these monuments are not very stable,” she said. “It's a very delicate piece.”
Tutic is limited to swirl pads, paintbrushes and even Q-Tips to dust from centimeter spaces between buildings. She also uses a cordless backpack vacuum cleaner. This is religiously punched to the lowest intensity setting for fear of sucking up the NYCA buildings and bus terminals.
Midtown Manhattan is the most difficult neighborhood to care for.
“Imagine a city. It's the same. It's very narrow, streets to sweep,” Tutic said. “Usually we try to find different tools and attachments that we find from other vacuums and things like that.
To get into every nook and cranny of the dense neighborhood, Chutik straddles the island, one foot planted in the East River, the other in Central Park, bending as far as he can until his nose almost touches the buildings of Empire.
“It's very tricky. It's kind of like a circus – acrobatics,” she said.
Her favorite cleaning spots are not only spacious, like the airport and the Flushing Meadows Corona Park museum home, but also neighborhoods that have a special place in Teutik's heart.
Last week, as she carefully swept through Williamsburg, Tutic took a moment to honor a smaller wooden version of what used to be Crest hardware. The 62-year-old store closed its doors this summer, but will forever be commemorated at Panorama.
“There's an emotional attachment to them. It's ridiculous. It's amazing. It's like that kind of detail-oriented work.
“I'm very, very big next to the model, but I feel small,” she added. “It's like the structure of a small house or building, so precise and delicate and beautiful, that there is so little material that you can pretend this is a home, so amazing that this is a cemetery. It’s the right thing to do.”
Despite Tutic's best efforts, there are some stains that have become permanent parts of the panorama, like water damage near Jamaica Bay and a suspected spill near South Ozone Park.
Panorama will receive protection in the coming months. A grant by the Institute of Worship at Museums and Libraries will fund a new set of lights for city buildings and replace areas affected by water damage and fresh paint for water. and public areas.
