It’s Not Serious, You’re Just Suffering A Mild Case Of Finkelpearl-Career Fatigue

Evidently Tom Finkelpearl still harbors some fantasy that MoMA will one day return:

When discussions ranking the boroughs of New York come down to numbers, Queens is near the top of many lists.

At 109 square miles, it is geographically the largest, and it is also the most diverse; 54 percent of residents speak a language other than English. Although second to Brooklyn in population, it is also home to the city’s tallest tree (the Alley Pond Giant at 133.8 feet), the most stations on the Long Island Rail Road (22) and the most historic chrome diners converted into Punjabi buffet restaurants (one).

But in recent months, a phrase has appeared in The Queens Tribune, a weekly newspaper, that suggests that Queens occupies only a fair to middling place in the citywide pecking order. The phrase is “third borough syndrome,” and the implication is that in terms of buzz and cachet, Queens is forever resigned to third place behind Brooklyn (recently hot) and Manhattan (traditionally hot).

In response, Queens boosters insist that the borough has other, less obvious charms.

“We feel like Queens is real New York,” said Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the Queens Museum of Art, who is believed to have been the first person to use the phrase when he uttered it last year in a Tribune interview. “That middle-class aspect of Queens is one of the things that gives us that less exciting image.”

Mr. Finkelpearl does not accept the notion of Queens as a third-place place. His museum has emblazoned the borough’s name on T-shirts and infants’ onesies, for sale in the gift shop, to counter those shirts from elsewhere that say “Brooklyn” or “New York.” (Ideas like “Queens: We’re Number 3!” and “Come for the Airports and Stay for the Food” were considered but rejected.)