Mission:

The Godwin-Ternbach Museum is a professional not-for-profit art institution situated on the Flushing, Queens campus of Queens College, the City University of New York. A comprehensive permanent collection of 3,500 objects from all cultures, ranging from the ancient world to the present day, is used to organize exhibitions and programs as cultural and educational vehicles for students, faculty and public audiences alike. Presentations of contemporary and historical significance alternate between showcases of the collection and special exhibitions. Founded in 1981 by art historian Frances Godwin and noted art restorer Joseph Ternbach, the Museum's mission has grown with the changing times from a teaching museum for the benefit of art students to a public museum that reaches out beyond the college campus.

The Museum serves many constituencies: the Queens College community, the 1.9 million residents of the borough of Queens and an audience from nearby Long Island communities and metropolitan New York. The Museum's primary audience is a vital, cosmopolitan mix of African-American, Asian, Latino and European cultures living in the most diverse county in the nation. Ternbach and Godwin were part of this century's waves of immigrants from Western and Eastern Europe who sought a better life and political refuge. Their desire to provide a vital center to carry on the history and cultural traditions they brought with them continues as a living part of the Museum's vision, now modeled to the interests of the new communities it serves.

All visual art and cultural exhibitions and programs of the Museum are free and accessible to the public.