View and pdf version - Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay

Transcription

SUMMER
2 0 1 5
THE ARCHIVE 54
The Journal of the
Leslie-Lohman Museum
of Gay and Lesbian Art
CONTENTS THE ARCHIVE NUMBER 54 SUMMER 2015
About the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art is the first and only dedicated LGBTQ art
museum in the world with a mission to exhibit and preserve LGBTQ art and foster the artists who
create it. Accredited by the New York State Board of Regents, the Museum has over 22,000 objects
in its collections, spanning more than three centuries of queer art. The Museum hosts 6-8 major
exhibitions annually, artist talks, film screenings, panel discussions, readings, and other events. In
addition, the Museum publishes The Archive, a quarterly educational art publication, and maintains
a substantial research library. The Museum is the premier resource for anyone interested in the rich
legacy of the LGBTQ community and its influence on and confrontation with the mainstream art world.
There is no other organization in the world like it.
ON THE DOMESTIC FRONT:
SCENES OF EVERYDAY QUEER LIFE
8
RECENT ACQUISITIONS
10
EXPANDING A VISION
12
MAKING SPACE FOR QUEER DIALOGUE
The Leslie-Lohman Museum is operated by the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, a non-profit
organization founded in 1987 by Charles W. Leslie and Fritz Lohman, who have supported LGBTQ
artists for over 30 years. The Leslie-Lohman Museum embraces the rich creative history of the LGBTQ
art community by informing, inspiring, educating, entertaining, and challenging all who enter its doors.
14
IMPORTANT ADDITIONS
TO THE LESLIE-LOHMAN COLLECTION
Founders
TASHA GROSS, MUSEUM FELLOW
Charles W. Leslie
J. Frederic Lohman (1922–2009)
16
GALLERIES OF INTEREST
Board of Directors
17
HE KNOWS WHAT HE LOVES
18
NEWS FROM PRINCE STREET PROJECT SPACE
19
SPECIAL EVENTS AT LESLIE-LOHMAN MUSEUM
20
PHOTOGRAPHY IS THE MEDIUM OF DESIRE—
AN INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY
22
KEHINDE WILEY: A NEW REPUBLIC
3
JAMES M. SASLOW, EXHIBITION CURATOR
JONATHAN DAVID KATZ PRESIDENT BOARD OF DIRECTORS
AND MUSEUM DIRECTOR HUNTER O’HANIAN
EM MILLER, SPEAKER SERIES COORDINATOR
JEFF WEINSTEIN
ROB HUGH ROSEN,
DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PROGRAMMATIC OPERATIONS
JERRY KAJPUST, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS
PETER WEIERMAIR, EXHIBITION CURATOR
ROBBIE GORDY
Back Cover:
Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at Leslie-Lohman Museum
Jonathan David Katz, President
Steven J. Goldstein, Vice-President
Ray Warman, Treasurer
James M. Saslow, Secretary
Meryl Allison
Deborah Bright
John Caldwell
Jeff Goodman
Cynthia Powell
Robert W Richards
Margaret Vendryes
Peter Weiermair
Jeff Weinstein
Co-Founder & Director Emeritus
Charles W. Leslie
Staff
Hunter O’Hanian, Museum Director
Wayne Snellen, Deputy Director for Collections
Rob Hugh Rosen, Deputy Director for Programmatic Operations
Jerry Kajpust, Deputy Director for External Relations
Branden Wallace, Collections Manager
Kris Grey, Exhibitions and Communications Manager
Cupid Ojala, PSPS Coordinator
Harvey Redding, Leslie-Lohman Studio
Em Miller, Speakers Series Coordinator
Noam Parness, Administrative Assistant–Curatorial
Stephanie Chambers, Bookkeeper
Daniel Sander, Receptionist
Johanna Galvis, Receptionist
Volunteer Staff
Phoebe Antoniw, Intern, Collections
Anique Ashraf, Intern, Collections
Cryder Bankes, Library
Nancy Canupp, Marketing, Operations
Scott Dow, Collections
Steven Goldstein, Collections, Administration
Tasha Gross, Museum Fellow
Daniel Kitchen, Museum Advocate
Stephan Likosky, Collections
Tai Lin, Collections
Robin Alex McDonald, Intern, Exhibitions,
Collections
Chuck Nitzberg, Events
Cynthia Powell, Marketing, Development
James Powell, Special Projects
James Schlecter, Events
The Archive
The Archive is an educational journal published by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay
and Lesbian Art to educate the general public about the Museum, its activities, and gay art.
Tom Saettel, Editor
Joseph Cavalieri, Production and Design
John Burton Harter, Peter, 1995, Oil on board, 30 x 24 in.
The John Burton Harter Charitable Trust.
This issue of The Archive
is made possible by a generous
donation from the
John Burton Harter
Charitable Trust.
©2015 The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. No part of this journal may be reproduced in any form without
the written permission of The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Copyrights for all art reproduced in this
publication belong to the artists unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
The Archive is available free in the Museum, and is mailed free of charge to LL Museum members.
The Leslie-Lohman Museum
26 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013-2227
(212) 431-2609
[email protected], leslielohman.org
Gallery Hours: Tues.–Wed. 12-6pm, Thur. 12-8, Fri–Sun 12-6, Closed Mon.
Closed on major holidays and between exhibitions.
FRONT COVER: Del LaGrace Volcano, Sunset Strip Soho, Anastasia and
Allegra, London, 1999, Digital C-print, 29.25 x 25.25 in. Courtesy the artist.
EXHIBITION ISSUE 54
On the Domestic Front:
Scenes of Everyday Queer Life
August 14 – October 25, 2015
James M. Saslow, Exhibition Curator
When Virginia Woolf declared
that every woman needs “a room of one’s
own” to be able to write, she touched a
wider nerve: the interior spaces of everyone’s home environment help create the
interior of the self, that identity we all
struggle to find and nurture—gays more
so than others. “Home” extends outside
to areas of the wider environment that,
while less private, similarly shelter and
enable both individual and group development. As historian George Chauncey
showed in his chronicle of Gay New York,
from 1900-1940, “[t]he world created
by homosexuals in the city’s streets,
cafeterias, and private apartments became the crucible in which they forged a
distinctive gay culture.”
Hence the focus of the exhibition On
the Domestic Front: Scenes of Everyday
Queer Life, opening August 14th in the
Museum’s main gallery. Drawn almost
entirely from LLM’s collection, the
show’s 70 images revel in the ordinary
things LGBTQ folk do in the course of
daily life, from the kitchen to the pool to
the workshop. Although the title stresses
the domestic realm, usually thought of as
what takes place in the home, everyday
life is also enacted in other physical and
social spaces, and the exhibit groups images from three cultural sites: at home,
at play, and at work. Artists represented range from familiar art world names
like Paul Cadmus, Peter Hujar, and David Wojnarowicz—the latter appears as
the subject of someone else’s painting,
(above) Patrick Webb, Toast, 2010, Oil on
canvas, 36.5 x 30 in. Gift of Brian Kloppenberg
and Patrick Webb.
(left) Saul Bolasni, Untitled, 1959, Watercolor and
ink on paper, 17 x 14 in. Gift of the artist.
poignantly dying of AIDS—to community-based artists whose queer subject
matter made it impossible to exhibit in
mainstream galleries.
In traditional artistic terms, such images
are called genre painting—the depiction
The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 54 ● SUMMER 2015
3
EXHIBITION ISSUE 54
of everyday life among ordinary people. Genre pictures often tell stories, or
at least tell us about an individual or a
way of life. While this category of subject was long considered less significant
than paintings of the high and mighty,
it holds special importance for queers,
who don’t often see ourselves reflected
in our own visual culture, and are hungry for images that define and celebrate
how we live—for us and for the “general public.”
“Domestic front” is a military metaphor, referring to all the routine activities that must continue back home
during wartime to support the troops
on the foreign battlefront. It speaks to
the importance of everyday life and its
inextricable link to struggles for greater goals. Sexual minorities are, in fact,
waging a war, whose goal is to invade
and claim social space: to make society
see images of our private life, acknowledge its validity, and legislate our right
to have our domestic affairs protected
and supported just like everyone else’s.
Queer genre imagery is a weapon aiming to enforce what we might call the
radicality of the ordinary: the insistence
that those who were long exiled by law
and custom from the right to a “normal” life are, at heart, perfectly normal
after all.
The stakes are high for increasing
public familiarity with our image, and
thus with our common humanity. We
follow in the footsteps of the black liberation movement, which exploited
the power of media images. In How
I Shed My Skin, a memoir of unlearning his Southern racism, novelist Jim
Grimsley recently recalled the transformative shock of seeing his first copy of
Ebony, the “Black Life Magazine”: “I
had never seen black people depicted
in this way before, as if they were just
like white people.” The battle of representation isn’t over for African-Americans or for queers, but the tide is flowing our way. In 2014, Massachusetts
congressional candidate Richard Tisei
made the news with a poster showing himself and his new spouse at their
wedding reception—a standard shot
in modern campaigns, except that his
new spouse is named Bernard. For those
(top) Douglas Blanchard, Zayin, New York
Shadows (David Wojnarowicz), 2000, Oil on
linen, 25 x 30 in. Gift of Jeff Goodman.
(right) John Burton Harter, Cocktail Party,
1994, Oil on masonite, 28.25 x 33.75 in. Gift
of the artist.
4
EXHIBITION ISSUE 54
who remember when gay imagery was
censored by the Postal Service, and a
whisper of homosexuality could destroy
a political career, this social and pictorial evolution is a “who’da thunk it?”
milestone.
(top) Bill Costa, The Bath (Homage to Paul Cadmus),
1985, Fiber gelatin silver print, Ed. 3/5, 16 x 20 in.
Gift of Douglass Roby.
(above) Stephen Hale, Patrick in Bathtub, 1995, Colored
pencil on paper, 1995, 30 x 40 in. Founders’ gift.
At Home
The first category of images in the exhibition centers on “home,” that cocklewarming word that politicians invoke
as part of the American Dream: hometown, homeland, home sweet home.
The word rings more ambivalently
in queer ears, because the homes we
struggle to create are so often, out of
necessity, not the ones we were born
into “back home.” Within the general
category of daily home life, clusters of
related works spotlight popular themes
and distinctive people and periods.
What comes across strongly is the staggering variety of queer styles, of both
life and home décor.
From its Victorian beginnings, New
York’s gay community embraced numerous sub-worlds divided by class,
taste, and politics. In the World War I
era—while Virginia Woolf was writing
in England—the creative and sexual
bohemians who gravitated to areas like
Greenwich Village sought to develop
their individual and social selves unfettered by the expectations and surveillance of “normal” small-town, nuclearfamily life. Most unmarried men in the
city lived in single-room rooming houses,
with little space or cash for creating
homey atmosphere, while single women often occupied women-only boarding houses. The tenement apartment
was a step up from the rooming house:
a cluster of paintings and photos documents the spartan but free existence in
these tiny places, with the stereotypical
bathtub in the kitchen, well into the
1990s. The granddaddy of these images is Paul Cadmus’s The Bath (1951),
a taboo-busting rendition of two men
living together in unself-conscious
domestic routine, which has inspired
several later artists such as Bill Costa.
Similar is Stephen Hale’s stark portrayal of a young African-American in an
old, bare bathroom, reminiscent of the
gritty East Village of the 1980s, where
Hale lived and chronicled his friends.
At the opposite pole, watercolors
by Saul Bolasni depict life among his
circle of comfortable and cosmopolitan
Parisian expatriates after World War II.
Here the borders between genre and
portraiture are blurred: When is a sitter
5
EXHIBITION ISSUE 54
just relaxing at home, and when is one posing self-consciously for a portrait? Bolasni’s
drawings are mainly portraits, but they
qualify as genre because his detailed interiors reveal much about the decorating taste
and self-fashioning of gay men of that era.
Transgender photographer Caleb Cole (see
Back Cover) pays parodic homage to those
pissy design queens with his imagined interior of, as the title has it, Refinement and
Elegance.
Besides a queer’s own room, LGBTQ
existence is also lived out in other quasidomestic environments, temporary homesaway-from-home such as hotels, hospitals,
and campgrounds. Joseph Messer’s scene
from an RV campsite speaks volumes about
a certain working-class butch lifestyle, while
the San Francisco documentarian Rink Foto
offers glimpses of everyday life in the fabled
Castro, where men of all kinds used the
streets as substitute living rooms and cruising grounds.
One cluster, perhaps best described as
“fantasy genre,” doesn’t document observed
“real life” but instead conjures up dreams of
domestic bliss as we might wish or hope it
to be. The epitome of this trend is the queer
Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset,
who earlier this year turned an entire Madison Avenue gallery into the seedy, memorabilia-stuffed bedroom of a fictional older,
artistically genteel English queen. Working
the same imaginative alchemy in another medium, Deborah Bright’s Dream Girls series
collages the photographer herself into classic
movie scenes, implicitly claiming the gaze,
and the role, of the male star in a fantasy relationship with the leading lady. Bright’s tone
is ironic and funny, but she also reminds us,
a bit wistfully, of all the visual-emotional role
models we grew up without.
At Play
Play includes the whole gamut of social and
physical pleasures: exercise and sports, bars
and restaurants, and the consumption of
culture in theatrical spaces like the neoncolored lesbian punk club captured by
London-based Del LaGrace Volcano (see
Cover). Though less private, recreational spaces beyond the home—the gym, the
beach, the park—are also nests for fledgling
queer community. Images of them are divided into three clusters focusing on exercise,
waterside, and nightlife.
Not surprisingly, the LLM collection
is chock-full of images of men at gyms,
pools, and beaches, where it’s permissible
to undress to varying degrees. An iconic
gay venue, the gym is invoked by George
Stavrinos, a celebrated mainstream illustrator whose linear elegance defined a
6
generation of male fantasy until he died
of AIDS in 1990. One of the exhibition’s
oldest works is an idyllic scene of boys
bathing by the Edwardian British watercolorist Arthur Winter Shaw. Later waterfront scenes are from more explicitly queer
locales: Provincetown, Fire Island, and the
late lamented Manhattan piers. Lest we
think such public visibility is a post-Stonewall novelty, Chauncey published a scandalized Gotham report from 1910 that
“our beaches are overrun by fairies.”
(top) Deborah Bright, Untitled (from the Dream Girl Series),
1990/2008, Archival ink jet print, 11 x 13.5 in. Founders’ gift.
(above) JEB (Joan E. Biren), Photographers at the Ovular,
a feminist photography workshop at Rootworks, Wolf Creek,
OR, 1980, Printed 2011, Digital silver halide C-type print,
12 x 17 in. Foundation purchase.
EXHIBITION ISSUE 54
the world to view. As private life becomes
more public, everyday life becomes a political issue. Sexual minorities are no longer fighting for mere tolerance or privacy, but for recognition that our ordinary
lives—practical matters like marriage,
adoption, and taxes—are worthy of equal
public support. Now — even more than
when feminists coined the slogan—“the
personal is political.”
Although this exhibition looks at parts
of our lives that are, in one sense, “just
like everyone else’s,” questions hover: Do
we do these things—the activities of everyday life—in a distinctive “queer” style
or styles? Do we look at them differently?
Even the most neutral narrative scene will
be received by a queer audience through the
multiple lenses of identity and history. We
create, and then gaze upon, scenes of domesticity out of a lifetime of memories, experiences, and emotions that are inevitably
different from straight makers and viewers.
Do the works in this exhibition demonstrate the uniqueness, or the universality,
of everyday queer life? Come see, and
decide for yourself. n
..............................................................
At Work
Scenes of labor are a third staple of genre
painting, for work has been a necessity of
daily life ever since Adam and Eve. Straddling the border between public and private, work is problematic for queer folk,
who may have to negotiate hostile territory to make a living. Significantly, LLM’s
permanent collection has next to nothing
showing men at work (not counting images of working-class hunks with bulging
muscles, more erotica than documentary). One exception is a self-portrait by
Patrick Angus in his studio, dramatizing
the creative work of the male painter. For
the most part, though, gay men have not
yearned to record their job lives, much less
to critique the traditional division of labor.
In contrast, the exhibition features numerous pictures of women at work. The
earliest is a photo from 1907 depicting
the painter Louise Abbema creating a
portrait of her lover, the legendary actress
Sarah Bernhardt, in her Paris studio. Until
recently, women were barred from many
such workplaces, so when feminism agitated to lower gender barriers, images of
women on the job made powerful propaganda. In particular, pictures documenting
lesbians’ physical strength and mechanical
skills—for example, women building the
stage at a women’s music festival—have an
inevitable feminist subtext and even, back
then, of lesbian separatism. JEB (Joan E.
Biren) was among the first to document
these new activities. Her photo of a group
of lesbians learning photography from the
pioneering lesbian artist Tee Corinne implicitly stakes a claim on the cultural territory of representation, and thus on control
of our individual and collective image.
Everybody’s Doing It
Today, thanks to electronic media, anyone can make a genre scene—and most of
us do. Every event of daily life is caught
on a cell phone and posted online for all
James M. Saslow is professor emeritus of art
history at the City University of New York
and secretary of the board of trustees of the
Leslie-Lohman Museum. He has published
widely on LGBTQ art and culture, including
Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality
in Art and Society (1986) and Pictures and
Passions: A History of Homosexuality and the
Visual Arts (1999).
(top) Joseph Messer, Untitled, c. 2000, Oil on
board, 24 x 24 in. Gift of Ian Robertson.
(below) Marco Silombria, Terrace II, 1985, Oil and
pencil on canvas, 43 x 58.75 in. Gift of the artist.
7
THE COLLECTIONS ISSUE 54
Recent
Donations
In 2014, we received donations
of more then 1,500 works of art totalling
more than $900,000. Without the support of our donors, we would not be able
to build the collection.
Many thanks to the following individuals and estates who made donations of
artwork or provided support to allow us
to purchase new works for the collection
(January 1 – June 30, 2015).
Eric L. Bellmann
Deborah Bright
Donald E. Butterfield
Earl Carlile
Anna Canapa
Walter Cessna
Caleb Cole
Alex Donis
Jez Dolan
Estate of George Dudley
Curtis Estes
Richard Falk
Joe Giordano
William Fetterman
Joel L. Fletcher and John Copenhaver
Ira Joel Haber
Joel Handorff
Jeanne Hilary
Tim Holman
Angela Jimenez
Brian Kloppenberg and Patrick Webb
Daniel Johnson
Arthur Lambert
Lance Larson
David Leigh
Charles Leslie
Brian M. Malsberger
Volker Morlock
Zanele Muholi
Jean Nicolas
Chuck Nitzberg
Hunter O’Hanian and Jeffry George
Charles T. O’Neal
Estate of Bernard Perlin
Kyle Renick
Eric Rhein
Alix L.L. Ritchie and Marty Davis
Neil Malcolm Roberts
James M. Saslow and Steve Goldstein
Stefano Scheda
Cliff Seidman
Norbert Sinski
8
Michael Sodomick
Wayne Snellen
Judith E. Stein
Estate of William Steinmetz
Stanley Stellar
Jack O. Summers
Richard Taddei
Kai Teichert
Douglas Blair Turnbaugh
Louis Wiley, Jr.
Estate of Thomas Wirth
Jeff Weinstein and John Perreault n
............................................................
If you signed a deed of gift or donated funds
for the purchase of artwork between January
1 and June 30 2015 and your name has been
accidentally left off this list, please accept our
apologies and let us know right away so we can
correct our records. Thank you.
(top) Angela Jimenez, Same-Sex Ballroom, Petra and Caroline, Chicago,
2006, Archival inkjet print, 13 x 20 in. Gift of the artist.
(above left) Harmony Hammond, A Queer Reader, 2010
Archival inkjet print on paper 43 x 29 in. Foundation purchase,
Courtesy the artist and Alexander Gray Associates, New York.
©HarmonyHammond/Licensed by VAGA, New York
(above) Hunter Reynolds and Maxine Henryson, Carousel I-Dea the
Goddess Within, 1994, Vintage C-print, 20 x 16 in, 3/10. Foundation
purchase, Courtesy the artist and P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York.
(top) Zanele Muholi, Being, 2007 Two silver
gelatin prints and one digital print, 11.75 x 8.75
in. (each panel). Gift of the artist, Courtesy the
artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
(right) Luna Luis Ortiz, Chleo Silent Film Star,
1999, C-print, 16 x 20 in. Foundation purchase.
(below) Jez Dolan, Nancy, 2014, Digital print, Ed.
1/5, 24 x 33.5 in. Gift of the artist.
9
THE MUSEUM ISSUE 54
Expanding a Vision
A Chat About the Museum’s Planned Expansion
Leslie-Lohman Museum Board of Directors President Jonathan David Katz
and Museum Director Hunter O’Hanian
Jonathan David Katz (JDK): So let’s
tell people what we’ve planned.
Hunter O’Hanian (HOH): It’s really
pretty simple. We are going to expand the
Museum into the former retail space next to
our existing location at 26 Wooster Street.
We will be taking over all of the ground
floor space north to Grand Street.
JDK: How did this come about?
HOH: Well, as you know, last autumn,
we started looking at the possibility of
expanding the Museum and even moving to
another location. We looked at a few other
buildings in the downtown area. There was
one building on the Bowery we looked at
which was over 30,000 square feet.
JDK: Yes, It would have made a
magnificent queer museum. It was such
a beautiful building, but it was, we all
realized, too much space too fast. It became
clear that at 3,800 square feet presently, we
needed to think about an interim step before
we moved to a larger location. We learned
that the space next door was going to be
available this year and we started planning
to see if it made sense. We moved into our
existing space in 2006. Expanding next
door is something we had talked about for
a while.
HOH: It seemed it was a natural move for
us. It will allow us to expand in a gradual,
controlled fashion while at the same time
make many facility-related improvements.
This move will give us many important
gains. And a lot of this came out of the
strategic planning process we began last
summer.
JDK: That was a helpful process, and
we now have a three-year strategic plan
that identifies our goals and values and
sets out a clear plan going forward. There
is a lot of work to do, but it all seems
doable. This has been a good process so
far. These things can be tricky, but we’ve
worked hard to incorporate everyone. The
Board set up a board/staff committee to
help support the project and assist in the
planning and design. So the entire staff
will be involved in the planning. Let’s take
a look at the plans.
Floor plan showing the existing gallery space and the expansion.
10
HOH: Well, when we started looking
at the possibility of expanding into the
space, we developed a program design
schematic. We wanted to see what options
the additional space would give us. We
have been fortunate to secure the services
of Steven Keith, a New York architectural
firm with the experience and credentials
to help us with the expansion. They have
been great so far, as has Museum member
Curtis Estes, who assisted us with creating
the initial design schematics.
JDK: The most important thing is that
the expansion will allow us to add an
additional gallery, roughly the same size as
our existing exhibition space, to continue
our programming dedicated to preserving
and exhibiting work that speaks to the
entire queer community.
HOH: While at the same time we are
available to anyone interested in visiting a
professional museum in New York. Our
vision is clear: We will continue building
a destination museum with a dedicated
LGBTQ focus on par with other small,
excellent museums in New York, like the
THE MUSEUM ISSUE 54
Studio Museum of Harlem, El Museo del
Barrio, the Rubin, or the Jewish Museum.
JDK: Agreed. When we are done with this
expansion, we will have doubled our size.
HOH: This is an important step for two
reasons. First, with two major galleries, we
can be open 365 days a year. Now, we are
closed between 10 and 14 days for the deinstallation and installation of exhibitions.
With two galleries, we will always be open
to the public. It will mean a lot to our
visitors. Nothing is more heartbreaking
than seeing two women from Amsterdam
at the front door, with only three days in
New York, who want to visit the LeslieLohman Museum, and we are closed for
installation.
JDK: Exactly, I’ve seen this happen way
too often.
HOH: The second major programmatic
change is that we are committed to
displaying work from the Museum’s
collection at all time in one of the two
galleries. This is very important as it gives
us opportunities to show much of the
work in our collection that has not been
exhibited.
JDK: The other major change is that
we are going to offer the staff a more
professional working environment that
will allow them to do their jobs without a
whole host of interruptions.
HOH: Yes, and we will have better places
for meetings and conversations, which will
allow for greater productivity.
JDK: The visitor will see more changes
as well, as there will be a dedicated visitor
greeting area and also a real book/gift
shop. We will continue the Wooster Street
Windows Gallery, which we will expand
significantly—it’ll be the greater street
presence so many of us have wanted.
HOH: Another great benefit will be the
ability to expand our collections area and
improve our storage of objects borrowed
from other institutions and individuals
for exhibition. As you know, we have
been borrowing more work recently from
institutions such as the Smithsonian, the
Library of Congress, the New York Public
Library, and the Fine Arts Museum of
San Francisco. With those loans come
requirements regarding storage; this will
allow us to better meet those requirements.
Exterior view of the space into which Leslie-Lohman Museum will expand, north to Grand St.
JDK: These expansions will also help
us as we move forward in developing an
educational program. We already have the
most robust queer arts speaker and tour
program in New York, but this expansion
will allow us to expand those efforts even
more.
HOH: As a museum, we are primarily an
educational institution. Everything we do
in this area is important.
JDK: So what’s the time frame? What are
the needs?
HOH: We have secured the space, devised
a plan, identified the funding, and are now
moving forward. I am hopeful that if all
goes according to plan we can be open
in the newly renovated space by the
end of 2015 or beginning of 2016. But
we need to increase our membership
base to help cover costs. We’re hoping
members can talk to their friends
about joining. We’re a free museum, so
membership is one of our few sources
of income.
JDK: It’s an ambitious plan—no
question—but it’s totally doable.
This expansion is the next step in the
Museum’s amazingly fast growth. We
only became a museum four years ago,
and we’re already doubling in size! n
11
SPEAKERS SERIES ISSUE 54
Making
Space
(left) Sheila Pepe, Common Sense, 2010,
Installation, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia,
with special participants, the crafts
women of Ossentia, Republic
of Georgia. Courtesy the artist.
For Queer Dialogue
Em Miller, Leslie-Lohman Museum
Speaker Series Coordinator
(below) Sheila Pepe, Research Station:
For the People, 2014, Installation, locally
resourced readymades with handmade
textiles within a steel structure, The 8th
Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, OCAT,
Shenzhen, China. Courtesy the artist.
“I’m making a space for
other people to do stuff in.” I recall Sheila
Pepe’s words as my partner and I unpack
boxes in our Brooklyn apartment. The
home setting we are constructing together—with our books, records, art, seating
arrangements for both work and recreation, rules of care and conduct—is not
unlike the environment Pepe created in
her work Research Station: For the People
(2014).
Research Station is composed of fiberwork partitions, shag carpet, colorful floor
pillows, books, TVs. The work’s netted
dividers suggest a room situated in the
center of a much larger exhibition space
with works of other artists on the adjacent gallery walls—an autonomous space
in relationship to the outside. In Research
Station, viewers, individually and in pairs
and groups, interact with the physical space
and one another. Like many of Pepe’s social
sculpture, this piece offers an opportunity
to pause and consider how the intentional
shaping of an environment can affect individual and community interactions within
the bigger picture.
The Leslie-Lohman Speakers Series, with
its related goal of making room for critical
dialogue between queer artists and the
public, hosted Sheila Pepe at the Museum
in early April. To a curious and admiring
audience, Pepe presented a discussion of
Research Station and other works spanning
her career, and shared her artistic history
as it relates to the formation of her identity—earlier years with her Italian-American
family in New Jersey, later shifting sociopolitical communities, and her continual navigation of the art world as a woman. With a
healthy dose of critical humor that Pepe so
willingly delivers, her lecture also addressed
themes of power and agency within marginalized groups. Citing formative experiences in lesbian and feminist communities,
Pepe shared memories of the excitement
of separatist camaraderie, followed by the
confusion that came with leaving her radi-
12
cal community when it imposed rules exclusionary to others—rules of interaction,
rules of presentation, rules of conversation, rules set to reject others, made by
those who had previously been excluded.
In light of this shift, Pepe broke away. In
doing so she found—and emphasized—
that there is often personal and creative
freedom on the fringe.
Later in April, performance artist
Heather Cassils, spoke as part of the Series,
and shared insight on similar themes
touched on by Pepe. Cassils described
the interpretation and navigation of the
art world, reiterating the notion of how
complex and revolutionary ambiguity
of gender and identity can be. Cassils
detailed performances and images influential to the revisioning of gender, body
expectations, and [mis]representation,
both in society and the art world. Se-
lected works from their emerging career
were paired with earlier activist works.*
For instance, the multimedia body work
Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture (2011)
was inspired by Eleanor Antin’s 1972
performance Carving: A Traditional
Sculpture, in which Antin documents
her loss of 10 pounds in 37 days. Cassils
enacted the opposite of Antin’s rapid
weight loss, documenting the effects of
a rigid 23-week bodybuilding routine to
gain 23 pounds of muscle. The process
of transformation included challenging
dietary regulations and extreme physical
training. Cassils built and defined muscle
rather than transforming through crash
dieting or surgery—the result is a political
commentary on transformation and the
representation of bodies in our culture.
Effectively, Cassils enlists the body as
raw material, as in the most recently
SPEAKERS SERIES ISSUE 54
completed piece, Inextinguishable Fire,
introduced to the Speakers Series audience, where the body is engulfed in flames
for the camera. The 14-second burn is
stretched to a slow 14 minutes on film.
The viewer is confronted with an image
of violence at a safe distance from the
actual danger, the point of privilege from
which so many of us observe daily acts
of aggression, such as those committed
against gender-variant people, people of
color, differently abled people, and people
within various marginalized communities. Cassils’s Inextinguishable Fire refers
to Harun Farocki’s 1969 film of the same
name, in which he brought attention to
the public’s anesthesia to the use of napalm in warfare. Both films explore the
radical unrepresentability of trauma and
violence. Cassils’s gesture arouses empathy, implicating the viewer in the immolation. The challenge to the viewer is to
consider the privilege of immunity in the
face of overt violence and injustice that
saturate our media and are often overlooked in our fast-paced world.
It is the slowing of an image that forces
us to look more deeply. It is a chance to
really see what’s happening. It is an opportunity for us to recognize the pain of
another and ask, “What have I done to
feed this fire? How can I make it stop?”
In this way, Cassils makes space for us to
dig in, to analyze, to be affected by who
and what is all around us. It is a call to
participate in a resolution, much in the
way Sheila Pepe designs environments for
people to connect with one another and
their surroundings. What we construct—
the walls we build, the lines we draw,
the ideas we share—directs our interplay
with each other and our world. Pepe and
Cassils have reminded us that we are social sculpture. n
* The artist Cassills expressed in the Museum
lecture that they/them/their are the preferred
pronouns to be used when referring to the artist.
............................................................
Em Miller is a school and museum educator
from Cincinnati currently enrolled in the Arts &
Cultural Management graduate program at Pratt
Institute. Miller works as a Coach and Program
Manager for the arts education non-profit,
Visual Thinking Strategies. Miller is also the
Leslie-Lohman Speaker Series Coordinator.
(top left) Heather Cassils, Day 1 of Time Lapse
(Front), 2011, Archival pigment print. Courtesy of
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.
(top right) Heather Cassils, Day 161 of Time Lapse
(Front), 2011, Archival pigment print. Courtesy of
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York
(left) Inextinguishable Fire, 2007-2015, Photo:
Robin Black with Heather Cassils. Courtesy of
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.
13
Avel De Knight and Julien Outin
Important Additions to the Leslie-Lohman Collection
Tasha Gross, Museum Fellow
Late in 2005 or early 2006,
Eugene Kurtz was going through the
Paris studio of his late partner, the artist Julien Outin, clearing out and selling paintings and drawings. One night,
the executor of Outin’s estate, a retired
banker named Jean Nicolas, found Kurtz
exhausted and sick, and prepared to
throw everything left in the studio out
onto the street, which he did, except for
one portfolio. Nicolas kept it, saying he
was meeting two American art dealer
friends who might be interested in it.
He took it to dinner with Joel Fletcher
and John Copenhaver, his two friends,
who lived outside of Washington, D.C.
Among the many works in the portfolio, the three discovered a drawing by
Boris Taslitzky done in Buchenwald in
1945, as well as numerous works by
Outin and his friends, including Avel De
Knight. Several of the works from this
portfolio have now been donated to the
Leslie-Lohman Museum by Jean Nicolas,
Joel Fletcher, and John Copenhaver.
Julien Outin (1923-2005) was born
in Landernau in Brittany, and went to
Paris to study art just before WWII. He
managed to avoid conscription by the
Germans by living “more or less clandestinely,” as Nicolas puts it, in the Lat-
14
in Quarter of Paris. There, he met other
artists like Andre Fougeron and Boris
Taslitzky, who survived the Buchenwald
concentration camp. He continued his
artistic training after the war, studying
with, and befriending, American artists
like Ellsworth Kelly and Avel De Knight.
De Knight (1923-1995) was a native
New Yorker, born to parents who had
emigrated from Barbados and Puerto
Rico. He studied at Pratt Institute for a
year before enlisting in a segregated unit
of the United States Army, serving from
1943 until the end of the war. In 1946, he
studied art in Paris on the G.I. Bill at the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Académie de la
Grande Chaumière, and the Académie Julian, where he most likely first met Outin.
Nicolas noted that the Académie Julien
stood out for its teaching of drawing using mostly nude male models.
De Knight and Outin became close
friends, and their relationship continued
after De Knight left Paris in 1956. They
visited each other frequently, De Knight
making almost yearly trips to Paris, and
Outin making trips to New York. They
remained friends until De Knight’s death
in 1995.
Jean Nicolas was introduced to Outin
in 1954, by a mutual friend, the painter
(top left) Avel De Knight, Untitled (Portrait of Julien Outin), n.d.,
Ink on paper, 5.3 x 8.5 in. Gift of Jean Nicolas.
(top right) Avel De Knight, Untitled, n.d., Ink on paper,
10 x 6 in. Gift of Jean Nicolas.
(below) Avel De Knight, Untitled, n.d., Ink on paper,
10.25 x 8 in. Gift of Jean Nicolas.
Eliane Thiollier (1926-1989). Three
years later, he met De Knight during
one of his visits to Paris. Over the years
Nicolas became close to Outin, eventually becoming the executor of his
estate.
Julien Outin is barely remembered
as an artist by the larger world now.
Apart from Ouvrages des Dames, published in 1970, little of his work was
published except a series of drawings
for the July/August 1965 publication of
PLANET, of which no copies can be
found. Avel De Knight is known mostly for his illustrations for Army Life
in A Black Regiment, done between
1969-1973. Despite the fact that his
work is in the permanent collections of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
Walker Art Center, and the Schomberg
Center for Research in Black Culture,
he has received little to no attention as
an LGBTQ artist in his birth country.
The works that have been donated
to the Leslie-Lohman Museum are all
the more valuable for this: De Knight’s
drawings firmly place him in Paris’s
postwar gay community, adding both
to our sense of history about this
place and time and to our sense of De
Knight’s own life and craft. Outin’s cartoons similarly add to our knowledge
of history and, of course, to our appreciation of this artist.
De Knight, Outin, and their circle
were witnesses to and participants
in Paris’s rich postwar artistic world.
De Knight was one of a number of
African-American artists, including
Herbert Gentry, Romare Bearden,
Beauford Delaney, and Ed Clark, who
made their homes in Paris in the late
1940s and 1950s. As has already been
mentioned, Outin was friends with Boris Taslitzky, who became known for
his drawings done at the Buchenwald
concentration camp. They were also
friends with LGBTQ artists like Jean
Cocteau and his partner, actor and theater director Jean Marais, Ellsworth
Kelly, Eliane Thiollier, and others.
These drawings convey some part of
what it meant to live in that world, and
what it meant to be gay in that world.
They uncover for us a world that has
been ignored and denied in mainstream
circles for decades, a part of history
that is much in need of exploring. n
..........................................................
(top) Julien Outin, Untitled, n.d., Ink on paper,
4.1 x 5.4 in. Gift of Jean Nicolas.
(left) Julien Outin, Untitled, n.d., Ink on paper,
7 x 3 in. Gift of Jean Nicolas.
(above) Julien Outin, Untitled, n.d., Ink on paper,
4.75 x 4 in. Gift of Jean Nicolas.
Tasha Gross is a historian of gender and
sexuality. They are a graduate of Goucher
College, Baltimore, and a fellow of the
Leslie-Lohman Museum.
15
EXHIBITION ISSUE 54
Galleries of Interest
See Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at Leslie-Lohman Museum Back Cover,
and PSPS Exhibitons on page 18.
NEW YORK CITY
NORTHEAST
Artist Space, 38 Greene St NYC artistsspace.org
thru Aug 23 Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play
A Gallery, 192 Commercial Street,
Provincetown, MA agalleryart.com Aug 5-11
David Sokosh; Aug 12-18 Robert Goldstrom;
Aug 19-25 Jamie Casertano; Aug 26-Sept 2
Donald Beal
BGSQD The Center, 208 W 13 St NYC bgsqd.
com thru Sept 6 Hunter Reynolds and Maxine
Henryson: I-Dea The Goddess Within Gay Pride
1994
ClampArt, 521-531 W. 25 St., NYC, clampart.com.
thru Aug 21 Lindsay Morris: You Are You, gendernonconforming children and their families; Sept
10-Oct 10 Peter Berlin: Wanted
Daniel Cooney Fine Art, 508-526 W. 26 St.
danielcooneyfineart.com Sept 10-Oct 24 Richard
Haines, fashion illustration
DeLuca 432 Commercial St. Provincetown, MA pattydelucagallery.com thru Aug 8 Allison
Hyder; Aug 1-14 Amy Kandall, Katrina del
Mar, Lynn Grayson, William Campbell; Aug
8-22 Lee Brock; Aug 15-29 Sam Smiley, Paul
Rizzo, Emma Louise
Firehouse Gallery, 8 Walnut Street, Bordentown,
NJ, firehousegallery.com Work by Eric Gibbons
McIninch Art Gallery, Southern New Hampshire
Univ. 2500 N River Rd, Manchester, NH Oct
15-Nov 14 Identity Shared: Ria Brodell, Caleb
Cole, Azita Moradkhani, Zoe Perry-Wood,
Curated by Arlette Kayafas
Rice/Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St.,
Provincetown, MA ricepolakgallery.com Jul
30-Aug 19 Matthew Schofield; Aug 20Sept 9 Robert Sherer; Sept 9-Jan 3 Group
Exhibition
The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky
St., Pittsburgh, PA, warhol.org thru Sept 6
Pearlstein, Warhol, Cantor: From Pittsburgh
to New York; thru Aug 28 Andy Warhol/
Ai Weiwei; thru Oct 4 Stephan Hoffmann:
Glycerin and Rose Water; thru Sept 7
Elizabeth Rudnick: Treasue/Trash
Hunter
Reynolds,
Fighting
For Our
Lives, 2015,
Archival
C-prints
and thread, 48 x 60 in.
PPOW,
Survival AIDS
Medication
Reminder.
Museum of Sex, 233 Fifth Avenue, NYC,
museumofsex.com thru Summer 2016 Hard
Core: A Century and a Half of Obscene Imagery
Participant Inc, 253 E. Houston St., NYC,
participantinc Sept 13-Oct 18 A.K. Burns
P•P•O•W, 535 West 22nd St., NYC, ppowgallery.
com thru Aug 7 Anthony Iacono Crúdites at
Sunset; Sept 10-Oct 10 Hunter Reynolds: Survival
AIDS Medication Reminder
Team Gallery 83 Grand St. NYC teamgal.com Sept
10-Oct 25 Robert Janitz; Kerckhoffs’ Principle
Team Gallery 47 Wooster St. NYC teamgal.com
Sept 10-Oct 25 Gardar Eide Einarsson Freedom
Motherfucker Do you Speak It?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1000 Fifth Ave.,
NYC metmuseum.org thru Oct 4 John Singer
Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends
The Out Hotel, 510 W. 42 St. theoutnyc.com
Sept 1-Mar Joseph Cavalieri: The International
Year of De-Light
The Painting Center 547 W 27 St.
thepaintingcenter.org Sept 29-Oct 24
Patrick Webb: Recent Work
BROOKLYN
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn,
NY brooklynmuseum.org thru Nov 1 Zanele
Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence
Figureworks 168 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY,
figureworks.com Sept 12-Oct 11 Royal Young:
Lush Lush Doom
16
Tanja Ostojic and Marina Gržinić, Politics of
Queer Curatorial Positions: After Rosa von
Praunheim, Fassbinder and Bridge Markland,
2003, Color photography, 40 x 40 in. Photo:
Jane Štravs, ©Tanja Ostojić and VG Bild-Kunst
Bonn. Schwules Museum, Homosexuality_ies
Stonewall Museum, 2157 Wilton Dr., Wilton Manors,
FL stonewallnationalmuseum.org
CANADA
Ottawa
La Petite Mort Gallery, 306 Cumberland St., Ottawa,
Ontario, Canada, lapetitemortgallery.com thru
Aug 2 Andrew Moncrief: Return of the Prodigal
Son; Aug 7-20 Noriko Shinohara: New York Sighs
EUPOPE
Berlin
NGBK, Oranienstrasse 25 ngbk.de Sept 16-Nov
15 Redemption Jokes
Wessel + O’Connor Fine Art 7 N. Main
St.,Lambertville, NJ, wesseloconnor.com Aug
8-Sept 27 David Graham: Impersonators
Schwules Museum, Lutzowstrasse 73, Berlin,
schwulesmuseum.de thru Dec 1 Homosexuality_ies
WEST
Groningen, NL
Antebellum Gallery, 1643 N Las Palmas Ave.,
Hollywood, CA, antebellumgallery.blogspot.com
Fotofest International at at Silver Street
Studios, 2000 Edwards St. Houston, TX
fotofest.org thru Aug 29 I Am a Camera:
LGBTQ Communities Seen From Within.
GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th St., San
Francisco, CA, glbthistory.org/museum thru
Dec 31 30 Years of Collecting Art That Tells
Our Stories Ongoing Queer Past Becomes
Present
ONE Archives Foundation, 626 N. Robertson
Blvd, West Hollywood, CA thru Sept 6 Art,
AIDS, America (Continues at West Hollywood
Library)
Rio Bravo Fine Art, 110 N Broadway St., Truth
or Consequences, NM riobravofineartgallery.
com Oct 22 It’s My Birthday, Delmas Howe at
80, new and old male nude paintings
Team Gallery 306 Windward Ave., Venice CA
teamgal.com thru Aug 7 Sam McKinniss: Dear
Metal Thing
MIDWEST
Leather Archives & Museum, 6418 N.
Greenview Ave. Chicago, IL leatherarchives.org
thru Jan 12 Morris L. Taylor: Colorful Shades
of BDSM & M/s; Ongoing exhibitons
Galerie MooiMan, Noorderstationsstraat 40,
9717KP Groningen, NL, mooi-man.nl Sept 6-Oct
17 Jaap de Jonge: See Me; Oct 18- Nov 28
Masculine Masters IV
Madrid
La Fresh Gallery, Conde de Aranda 5, Madrid,
lafreshgallery.com Ongoing Bruce LaBruce, Gorka
Postigo, Nicolás Santos, Brian Kenny, Slava Mogutin
Munich
Kunstbehandlung/Saatchi Gallery 40 Müller Strasse
40, Munich, kunstbehandlung.de thru Oct 5 Robert
C Rore: My Heroes
Paris
La Galerie au Bonheur du Jour, 11 rue Chabanais,
Paris, aubonheurdujour.net thru Aug Anatola
Soungouroff Ongoing Erotic objects, paintings and
drawings. Publications.
Musée d’Orsay, 62 Rue de Lille musee-orsay.fr
Sept 22-Jan 17 Splendeurs et misères. Images
de la prostitution en France (1850-1910); Oct 13Jan 24 Who’s Afraid of Women Photographers?
(1918-1945)
Vienna
Leopold Museum, at the MuseumsQuartier, Vienna
leopoldmuseum.org thru Sep 14 Tracey Emin/
Egon Schiele Where I Want to Go
SOUTH
Tampere, Finland
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art 600
Museum Way, Bentonville, AR crystalbridges.
org, thru Oct 5 Warhol’s nature
Museum Centre Vapriikki, Alaverstaanraitti 5,
Tampere, Finland thru Sep 6 Sealed with a Secret
Correspondence of Tom of Finland n
BOOKS ISSUE 54
He Knows
What He Loves
Jeff Weinstein
The Art of Looking:
The Life and Treasures
of Collector Charles
Leslie By Kevin Clarke,
Bruno Gmünder,
208 pages, $59.99.
Cover image: Charles
Leslie on the Nile,
reading the Egyptian
Mail during a river
cruise in the 1980s.
“I never, not for a second,
got tired of collecting gay
erotic art.” —Charles Leslie
Art lovers likely understand what New
York’s superb Whitney Museum, Morgan Library, Frick Collection, and Rubin
Museum of Art have in common, along
with similar institutions across the country and around the world. They each
began with one vision, one collection.
Extraordinary hoardings of art can come
together by historical “committee,” as
the expansive, exhaustive Met, Prado,
and Louvre prove, but museums that
start with a singular personality grow in
ways that retain a signature taste.
Such is the vision of Charles W. Leslie,
Jr. Born in 1933, Leslie grew up in Deadwood, South Dakota, the town in which
Calamity Jane was laid to rest. He carried
his very early blossoming as a gay adolescent to Los Angeles, living a handsome
young man’s sexually adventurous life; he
was even a post-Lana Turner soda jerk at
Hollywood and Vine. During the Korean
War, Leslie was drafted into the Army;
he later traveled to postwar Europe,
performing as an actor and dancer; visited Morocco and became a pioneering
part of Manhattan’s late-60s art center,
SoHo. His moves and loves—of people
and art—are recounted in a new, visually
opulent biography, The Art of Looking:
The Life and Treasures of Collector
Charles Leslie by journalist Kevin Clarke.
At first, the cocktail-table tome looks
like one you’d buy just for the lush illustrations, many of which are surprising,
priapic artworks discovered by Leslie in
flea markets, bought from cabaret friends,
rescued from estates of artists vanquished
by AIDS. Yes, the acquisitive Mr. Leslie
had an eye, and an appetite. With the
help of his longtime partner in love and
art, interior designer Fritz Lohman, their
thousands of paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, and photos launched what
is now the only gay and lesbian museum
of art in the world: The Leslie-Lohman
Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.
Yet the juice of the book lies in its intriguing text, ephemera, and snapshots
that together portray a pre-Stonewall
gay man making his way in a dangerous, tantalizing world we still amazingly know little about. Too few records of
last century’s queer, quotidian life exist,
in spite of historians who search doggedly for just such evidence—the diaries of
New Yorker Donald Vining, for example, are a welcome exception.
In The Art of Looking, we learn that
young Leslie was an activist, getting a
group of fellow Pasadena Playhouse students together to protest the “Commiepinko-fag”-baiting House Un-American
Activities Committee. We discover that
Death in Venice author Thomas Mann,
meeting Leslie still in tights after a performance in the Netherlands, follows
him to a bathroom and pinches his butt,
the “intensity of which took Charles by
surprise.” [Leslie: Actually it was a pot.]
Photos we see of Leslie at the time go far
to explain Mann’s behavior.
The book is rich with recollections
such as these, anecdotes that are more
than anecdotes because a significant, hidden gay history turns out to be the core
of collector Charles Leslie’s telling and
valuable life story. n
............................................................
Critic and editor Jeff Weinstein has been
writing about arts and LGBT issues since 1971.
Jeff has been a member of the board of the
Leslie-Lohman Museum since 2014.
(top left) Fritz Lohman in 1962, the year Charles
Leslie met the 40 year old interior designer.
(above center) Charles Leslie in Florida, near the
home of his “patron” Gilford Hall, who took him on
an around-the-world trip as a companion.
(above) Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman at home
on Prince St., 2006. Photo © Stanley Stellar.
17
PRINCE STREET PROJECT SPACE ISSUE 54
News from Prince Street Project Space
Rob Hugh Rosen, Deputy Director of Programmatic Operations
Programming subject to change;
check the LLM website for updates.
Warrior of Hope:
Photographs by Lester Blum
Opening Friday, July 24, 6-8pm
Continuing Saturday and Sunday,
July 25-26, 12–6pm
Lester Blum’s photographic essay revolves
around an allegorical figure, The Warrior
of Hope. The Warrior emerged as the
personification of Hope from the chaos of
the world to offer comfort for all suffering
from disease, inequality, and injustice. He
honors those who fought the HIV/AIDS
battle and lost, and offers solace to those
currently fighting the war and envisioning
a time when the ravages of the disease will
be eradicated from the earth. The Warrior looks forward to the ability of future
generations to live in a harmonious world;
until that day, he will raise his staff on
behalf of all.
The Tenth goes to Hollywood
(and other rest stops):
America, Volume II
Opening Friday, August 21, 6-8pm
August 22-23, 12–6pm
The Tenth Zine is a Brooklyn-based biannual print publication aimed at depicting
the diversity of the black gay community,
published by Khary Septh, Kyle Banks, and
Andre Jones. The second installment of
their Americana Issue is meant to invoke
individualism and to be a manifestation
of the Black Gay pioneering spirit. It’s like
Jimi Hendix’s Star-Spangled Banner, or
Glenn Ligon’s exhibition at the Whitney
Museum, America—part inversion, part
homage, all anecdote for self-discovery and
self-preservation. From across the country—New Hampshire to Seattle—ideas
from the world of industry to Hollywood
are explored though essays, interviews, and
a full range of visual arts. In the process,
the editors of The Tenth have developed
an authentic epistemology of Black/Gay/
Queer America in 2015, all while radically
asserting that they too have just as much
right to re-color the “collective American
consciousness” as anyone else. Art from
the zine will be on display.
18
Impossible Bodies
Opening Friday, October 2, 6-8pm
October 3-4, 12–6pm
Cupid Ojala (b.1977) will show his drawings
about masculine identity and desire through
the perspective of a transman. Some drawings
are of fantasy spaces with “phallic trees, little
naked men, and undiscovered pleasures.”
Other images represent the human body,
emphasizing its hair and allowing animal
imagery to appear. Raised in a conservative
Mormon family, Ojala transitioned from
female to male in 2003. He received his
MFA at Parsons The New School for Design
in 2012. In 2015 he completed a yearlong
monthly performance series called Love Prescriptions. He has exhibited and performed
at venues including Art in Odd Places in New
York, Lincoln Arts Project Gallery in Massachusetts, The Stamp Gallery at the University
of Maryland, and participated in the Alliance
Française’s Crossing the Line Arts Festival.
His most recent publication is the Ranger
Risky flipbook, carried at Printed Matter.
Queer/Art/Mentorship
Second Annual Exhibition Opening Friday, October 16, 6-8pm
October 17-18, 12–6pm
Continuing Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,
October 23-1825, 12–6pm
Queer/Art/Mentorship announces its second
Annual Exhibition, to be held at the Prince
St. Project Space from October 16–25th.
The multi-disciplinary, inter-generational
arts program (QAM) that pairs and supports
mentorship between emerging and established
queer artists in NYC, broadens its reach with
this public program, exhibiting artwork from
each of its participant from the 2014–2015
program. The exhibition arrives at the close of
the 12-month mentorship process for the Fellows, who will welcome the new 2015-2016
Mentees. The 2014-2015 Annual Queer/Art/
Mentorship Exhibition is curated by Vanessa
Haroutunian and Samantha Richardson.
The Art of Jacking Off
Opening Friday, October 30, 6-8pm
Continuing Saturday October 31, 12–6pm
The New York Jacks, in operation since the
early 1980s, is a social club for gay men.
Alan Long, a member of the club in its early
(clockwise from top left) Lester Blum, Final Hope,
2015, Ultra Chrome archival print, 18 x 12 in.
Courtesy of the artist.
Idris & Tony, Ameriqa, 2014, Digital photograph, Size
variable. The Tenth, Volume 2. Courtesy of the artists.
Alan Long, Christmas (Detail), early-1980s, Paint
on brown paper, 30 x 54 in. Gift of New York Jacks.
Cupid Ojala, Vampire #2, 2013, Ink on
Dura-Lar, 17 x 14 in. Courtesy of the artist.
years, would often decorate the club’s
various spaces with his large-scale murallike works. Drawn and painted on wide
rolls of paper, Long would reference the
styles of more well-known artists such as
Blade, Harry Bush, and others. Nine of
these decorative works have been saved,
and last year the club,
donated the set to the Leslie-Lohman Museum. This weekend show offers the chance
to see entertaining artifacts rescued from a
generation ago. n
UPCOMING AT PRINCE STREET
PROJECT SPACE
November 13 – 15 Anthony Viti
November 20 – 22 Paul Wirhun
December 10 – 5 Fyodor Paulov
January 7 – 12 Julian Hsiuing
SPECIAL EVENTS ISSUE 54
Founders’ Day Benefit Celebration
Jerry Kajpust, Deputy Director for External Relations
Over 200 people attended the
(clockwise from
top left: All photos
ⓡ Stanley Stellar.)
Guests at the
Founders’ Day
Celebration, Barbara
Fushille, Urvashi
Vaid, Kate Clinton,
Jonathan Ned Katz.
Kevin Clarke,
author of The Art
of Looking.
Charles W. Leslie
addressing the
Founders’ Day guests.
Robbie Gordy of
Christie’s conducting
our Founders’ Day
live auction.
LESLIE-LOHMAN EVENTS
We are always adding new events to
our programming at the Museum, so
be sure to check our calendar section at
LeslieLohman.org to keep up to date.
Also, you can join our e-mail list by
signing up on our website (Join Mailing
List). You’ll receive our weekly update
of events and happenings here at the
Museum, and once a month you’ll
receive our Leslie-Lohman Recommends,
featuring exciting events and exhibitions
happening throughout New York City
and beyond.
Third Annual Founders’ Day benefit celebration held on June 4th, 2015 at the
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and
Lesbian Art, located at 26 Wooster Street
in New York City. This event honors the
Museum’s co-founder’s Charles Leslie
(1933–) and Fritz Lohman (1922-2009),
who began supporting gay artists in their
Soho loft in 1969. From that early event,
they formed a nonprofit foundation in
1987 with a mission to exhibit and preserve art that speaks directly to the many
aspects of the LGBTQ experience and to
foster its artists.
Accredited by the New York State Board
of Regents in 2011, this organization, now
a museum, embraces the rich creative history of the LGBTQ art community by educating, informing, inspiring, entertaining,
and challenging all who enter its doors.
The Museum brings a new perspective,
providing viewers with a personal context
and insight into artists never seen before.
The evening included the launch of
The Art of Looking, a new biography of
Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman by Kevin
Clarke, published by Bruno Gmünder. The
book chronicles the life of Leslie and his
partner with early stories of their lives, their
collection, and major historic moments in
contemporary history and culture.
At the event Museum Director Hunter
O’Hanian announced that the Museum
will nearly double in size as it expands
into the adjacent storefront at 28 Wooster,
with renovation planned for late autumn
of 2015.
Guests enjoyed entertainment provided
by singers Jesse Blumberg and Scott Murphree, accompanied by Steven Blier on keyboard, performing Tennis Duet and You’re
the Top. A live and silent auction conducted by Robbie Gordy of Christie’s auction
house helped raise over $30,000, with proceeds going to support the Museum and donating artists. DJ Billy Beyond maintained a
festive mood throughout the evening. This
event was held in conjunction with the Museum’s current exhibition, Interface: Queer
Artists Forming Communities Through Social Media, an eclectic mix of queer New
York artists working in a wide variety of
styles and mediums that became friends and
colleagues through social media. The exhibition runs through August 2, 2015. n
19
UPCOMING EXHIBITION ISSUE 54
Photography Is the Medium of Desire—
An International Anthology
November 6, 2015 – January 17, 2016
Peter Weiermair, Exhibition Curator
The curator of this international
photographic exhibition is board member Peter Weiermair,
an expert in photography, who previously curated at the
Leslie-Lohman Museum the exhibitions Rolf Koppel, Stanley Stellar, and Luigi and Luca, as well as the group exhibition of gay Italian artists, Diaries.
(left) Daniel M. Schmude, Leidenschaft 4 (Passion 4), 2011,
Digital C-print, 17.71 x 9.29 in. Courtesy the artist.
(above) Ren Hang, #13, Color photograph. Courtesy the artist,
and OstLicht Gallery, Vienna.
20
UPCOMING EXHIBITION ISSUE 54
The connecting link between the work in this international anthology is the theme of desire as expressed in photography: Every artist is “looking on” to the extent allowed
by their subjects. If the expression is clear, we will feel desire ourselves, as well as sense the desire between those
depicted. The twelve contributing artists, varying greatly
in style, are from China, Japan, Greece, Russia, Holland,
Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Approach varies from documentation to staged photo shoots,
from the combination of photography and text to the use
of video.
Daniel Schmude presents a series of monochromatic
photographs of the tender sexual intercourse between a
black man and a white man. Joseph Maida gives us lusty
multiracial models from Hawaii. Dimities Yeros’s diary
documents his work with models and friends. Ren Hang
captures the fantastic configurations of young naked Chinese men. Catherine Opie offers her observation of fist
fucking. The hidden transgender world of China is also
presented in the exhibition.
The video contributions in the exhibition are mostly
looping iconic imagery—Paolo Ravalico Scerri’s expression
of unfulfilled desire, Sasha Kargaltsev’s vision of a fight
turning to love, and Alicia Framis’s humorous and beautiful interpretation of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” with a
runway of continuous beautiful naked men. n
(above) Joseph Maida,
Ben (Irish, English,
Spanish, Chinese,
American Indian,
Filipino) 2011, 2011,
Archival pigment print,
27.375 x 21.875 in.
Courtesy the artist.
(right) Alicia Framis,
8 juin libran las modelos
(June 8, Freed Models),
2006, Video. Courtesy
the artist; Annet Gelink
Gallery, Amsterdam;
Barbara Gross Gallery,
Munich; and Juana de
Aizpuru Gallery, Madrid.
21
OUTSIDE OUR WALLS ISSUE 54
Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic
Brooklyn Museum, February 20 – May 24, 2015
Robbie Gordy
One of the stated goals of
the American artist Kehinde Wiley is to
position people of color into an art-historical canon from which they are largely
absent. A stroll through a New York
institution such as the Metropolitan
Museum of Art provides more than
enough evidence to support Wiley’s aims.
For centuries—and, one might argue,
into the present day—black men and
women were merely supporting players
or objects of fascination for Western
audiences. From the dutiful servant toting flowers in Manet’s Olympia to Girodet’s clothed yet decidedly ‘endowed’
Jean-Baptiste Belley, historical representations of blackness leave little agency
for their subjects.
Leave it to Wiley, then, to fill that
gap, with grand, richly colored canvases
of black men—women appear in more
recent work—with titles appropriated
from well-known examples of classical
painting. In pictures such as Napoleon
Leading the Army over the Alps (2005), a
twist on the French neoclassicist David’s
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801), a
black man in a camouflage tracksuit and
Timberland boots assumes the emperor’s place astride a brilliant white horse,
gold cape billowing triumphantly in the
wind. Newer works on display, including
luminous stained glass in which Catholic saints are replaced with black men,
further Wiley’s aspirations to position
the black figure in some of Western art’s
oldest pictorial genres. Yet it is for the
canvases dominating his mid-career retrospective, that the artist remains most
celebrated.
Wiley identifies as gay—enough to invite any queer visitor to search for signs
of homoeroticism or same-sex desire.
Discourse on the sexual and racial politics of black queerness could (and does)
fill volumes; but the artist, for his part,
seems largely to avoid the kind of explicit content that might overshadow his
historicism. Yet it is nevertheless present:
in the idealized, high cheekbones of Wiley’s youthful male subjects; in the minute golden spermatozoa that dart about
the backgrounds of multiple paintings;
22
and in the alluring posing of several of
his models.
In Saint Andrew (2006), a black man
in a polo shirt and white sneakers straddles the Christian saint’s eponymous,
x-shaped wooden cross, grasping its
wooden beams in a suggestive, phallic
display. In the large-scale canvas Femme
Piquée par un Serpent (2008), a young
man lies contorted on a white cloth, his
face turned toward the viewer with vulnerable, open-mouthed submission. It
is no accident that his low-slung jeans
reveal a pair of Hanes underwear right
at the canvas’s center, and the painting’s floral background falls on the sit-
Kehinde Wiley, Napoleon Leading the Army over
the Alps, 2005, Oil on canvas, 108 x 108 in.
Courtesy the artist and Roberts & Tilton, Culver
City, California; Sean Kelly, New York; Galerie Daniel
Templon, Paris; and Stephen Friedman Gallery,
London. © Kehinde Wiley.
ter like petals upon a lover. Based on a
controversial, nineteenth-century French
sculpture of the same title, the canvas is
undeniably beautiful and, insomuch as a
fully clothed figure can project eroticism,
an example of what might be called Wiley’s ‘gay’ artistic sensibility. Morpheus
(2008) similarly presents a winsome
black male enveloped in dreamlike floral
projections. Intricate patterns, inspired
OUTSIDE OUR WALLS ISSUE 54
by Middle Eastern textiles, the wallpapers of William Morris, and other sources, are nearly omnipresent throughout
Wiley’s oeuvre. They are, in truth, the
most fascinating and brilliantly executed
feature of the works on view, alternating between mere decorative elements to
sinister, weed-like growths that bind and
overwhelm Wiley’s human subjects.
Whether in oil, glass, or even bronze,
each piece at the Brooklyn Museum
demonstrated an obvious insistence on
perfection. This gloss might leave some
viewers wanting more. For as much as
Wiley has positioned the black figure
within the genre of history painting—a
notable achievement, for sure—his portraits reveal little about their subjects. In
an era when the representation of black
men remains decidedly problematic (see
the saint-or-sinner debates surrounding
Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown),
what does it mean to portray black subjects solely as heroic, saintly figures of
unmatched beauty and nobility? Does it
not reflect, perhaps unintentionally, the
‘safety’ with which the white majority
too often prefers to view the minority?
In Wiley’s canvases, blackness is elegant
and picturesque; what it is not is threatening or controversial. If the presence of
black men and women in Wiley’s painting was at one time groundbreaking,
his insistence on maintaining the same
theme for more than a decade leaves me
to wonder how his work will need to
progress in coming years.
I found that the best works in the exhibition were also the earliest, completed
in the early 2000s when Wiley was completing his MFA at Yale. The video piece
Smile (2001), in which the artist directs
young black men to maintain a toothy
grin for as long as they can physically
stand it, reminds us of the blackface imagery depicting black men and women as
happy, harmless beings—a counterpoint to
the dangerous ‘angry black man’ trope that
still occasionally haunts, for example, the
Obama administration. In Conspicuous
Fraud Series #1 (Eminence) (2001), the
artist paints a suited and stone-faced male
figure, his hair swirling across the canvas
in medusa-like Afro tendrils. At once buttoned-up and dangerous, he is emblematic of the dualism that confronts so many
men and women of color—to say nothing
of queer individuals worldwide. These moments remind us of Kehinde Wiley’s importance as a political and decidedly talented
artist, one who reminds us why the depiction of black lives also matters. n
............................................................
Robbie Gordy is a features writer and charity
auctioneer at Christie’s New York.
(above) Kehinde Wiley, Saint Andrew, 2006, Oil on canvas, 96 x 84
in. Courtesy the artist and Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California;
Sean Kelly, New York; Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris; and Stephen
Friedman Gallery, London. © Kehinde Wiley.
(below) Kehinde Wiley, Femme Piquée par un Serpent, 2008 Oil
on canvas, 102 x 300 in. Courtesy the artist and Roberts & Tilton,
Culver City, California; Sean Kelly, New York; Galerie Daniel Templon,
Paris; and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. © Kehinde Wiley.
23
Current and Upcoming Exhibitions
at Leslie-Lohman Museum
On the Domestic Front:
Scenes of Everyday
Queer Life
26 Wooster Street
August 14 – October 25, 2015
An exhibition including 70 works
mostly from LLM’s permanent
collection depicting scenes from
everyday queer life. The work will
range widely in subject matter, style,
and time, from the “Gay 1890s”
to the present encompassing three
themes—home, work, and play.
Curated by James M. Saslow.
Caleb Cole, Refinement and Elegance, 2010,
Archival pigment print, 13 x 19 in.
Gift of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston.
Photography Is the
Medium of Desire—
An International
Anthology
26 Wooster Street
November 6, 2015 –
January 17, 2016
An exhibition about beauty, eros,
and sexuality by contemporary
transgender, gay, and lesbian artists
of different generations.
Curated by Peter Weiermair
Anthony Gayton, The Collector, 2009,
Archival ink on paper, 39.75 x 59 in.
© 2009 Anthony Gayton. Courtesy the artist.

View and pdf version - Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay

Transcription

Similar documents

PIONEERS AND DRIFTERS, COWBOYS AND INDIANS

HP-U-505 MSI.indd

Memberships from Coast to Coast and Everywhere In Between

Saturday, June 16th 2:00 to 5:00 pm Tickets: $15

Let`s Create a NATIONAL SUPPORT MUSEUM

Creation Experience Museum Review

SS1 - Musées de la civilisation

Louvre Museum - Verner Johnson, Inc

Lucy Raven - School of Art

PPM-Persatuan Pustakawan Malaysia (Librarians