Arts & International Affairs: 2.3: Autumn/Winter 2017 | Page 32

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
ductive than the deliberation methods employed by the UN, a forceful criticism of the
effectiveness (or lack thereof) of traditional global diplomacy.
Figure 2: View of the performance. Courtesy Queens Museum, New York.
Mirroring what takes place in the UN’s headquarters, museum visitors could experience
the pUN activities through half-hour guided tours which included attendance of the ses-
sions, the history of the UN and a tour of Reyes’ exhibition inspired by the pUN’s under-
lying themes of dialogue and peace. PUN also overlapped with an event in which Peter
Launsky-Tieffenthal, the then UN Under-Secretary-General for Communication and
Public information, unveiled a plaque at the Museum with the following text engraved:
“On this site, from 1946 to 1950, The United Nations General Assembly convened”
(UN Blogs 2013). At this unveiling, Reyes presented Launsky-Tieffenthal with a peti-
tion from the General Assembly of pUN demanding arms disarmament on a global scale.
The pUN meetings and tours took place within an exhibition, which was composed of
several sculptures created by Reyes for the atrium of the museum: namely, a miniature
cityscape composed of seating cubes; the Drone Dove—merging the forms of a drone
and a dove of peace (see Figures 2 and 3) and described as resembling
both the United States Air Force Predator Drone, currently used for
drone attacks, as well as the simple beauty of modern sculptures that
depict doves in the postwar twentieth century, as seen in the work of
Pablo Picasso and Isamu Noguchi. As a symbol, Drone Dove is a silent
protest urging all governments to stop the use of unmanned vehicles in
warfare (Reyes 2013a:266).
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