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THE ARCHI VE 56 Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art
CONTENTS THE ARCHIVE ISSUE 56 SPRING 2016
3 THE 1970S: THE BLOSSOMING OF A QUEER ENLIGHTENMENT 8 BALANCING THE COLLECTION
HUNTER O’HANIAN, MUSEUM DIRECTOR
9 NEWS FROM PRINCE STREET PROJECT SPACE
ROB HUGH ROSEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PROGRAMMATIC OPERATIONS
13 SPECIAL EVENTS AT LESLIE-LOHMAN MUSEUM
JERRY KAJPUST, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS
14 QUEER THREADS: BALTIMORE, BOSTON, AND BEYOND
JOHN CHAICH, CURATOR
16 ROMAINE BROOKS: UNDERSTOOD AT LAST
REVIEW OF: ROMAINE BROOKS: A LIFE
JAMES M. SASLOW
17 EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING AT THE MUSEUM
EM MILLER, EDUCATION COORDINATOR
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 24,000 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. 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.
Founders Charles W. Leslie J. Frederic Lohman (1922–2009)
Board of Directors Jonathan David Katz, President Deborah Bright, Vice-President Cynthia Powell, Vice-President
Meryl Allison, Treasurer James M. Saslow, Secretary Daniel S. Berger Steven J. Goldstein
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 Mon Iker, Operations Manager Cupid Ojala, PSPS Coordinator Harvey Redding, Leslie-Lohman Studio Em Miller, Education Coordinator Noam Parness, Administrative Assistant–Curatorial Garrett Guilbeau, Bookkeeper Daniel Sander, Receptionist Johanna Galvis, Receptionist Massima Desire, Receptionist Nancy Canupp, Receptionist Riya Lerner, Membership Assistant Kim Hanson, Installations Chris Bogia, Collections Peter M. Schepper, Framing
20 THE COLLECTION 22 GALLERIES OF INTEREST 23 WINDOWS GALLERY: THE VIDEO WORK OF SIDNEY MULLIS
Peter Weiermair Jeff Weinstein
Co-Founder & Director Emeritus
18 MIGRATING ARCHIVES—SURROGATES FROM ELSEWHERE E.G. CRICHTON, CURATOR
Jeff Goodman Robert W Richards Andr´e St. Clair Margaret Vendryes
Volunteer Staff Cryder Bankes, Library Rachel Davis, Intern, Collections Steven Goldstein, Collections, Administration Daniel Kitchen, Museum Advocate Johnny Lunn, Marketing Chuck Nitzberg, Events
Cynthia Powell, Marketing, Development James Powell, Special Projects Nirvana Santos, Intern, Exhibitions James Schlecter, Events Jason D. Smith, Events Conrad Ventur, Collections David Walters, Collections
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, Black Spot , 1994, Oil on board, 44 x 36 in. The John Burton Harter Charitable Trust.
©2016 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
This issue of The Archive is made possible by a generous donation from the
John Burton Harter Charitable Trust.
26 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013-2227 (212) 431-2609 info@leslielohman.org, 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: Peter Hujar (1934–1987), Gay Liberation Front Poster Image, 1970, Silver gelatin print, 18.2 x 12.4 in. Collection of Leslie-Lohman Museum, Gift of the Peter Hujar Archive, LLC. ERRATA: In The Archive, Issue 55, Page 20, the Jimmy De Sana photograph was inverted. We apologize for this error.
EXHIBITION ISSUE 56
The 1970s: The Blossoming of a Queer Enlightenment April 8 — June 26, 2016, Leslie-Lohman Museum Curated by Museum Staff
In the mid-1600s, the Age of Enlightenment began and lasted to the end of the 1700s. Coming out of the Middle Ages, it was a time when European societies looked to reason and humanism as means of addressing tyranny imposed by government, organized religion, and social mores. The human psyche was liberated to explore the possibilities it could play in an expanded civilization. Fast-forwarding to the 1970s, we saw a period of enlightenment for the gay community in the United States that ultimately resonated throughout the world. In this exhibition, we look at the period between two pivotal events: the June 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn and when the New York Native published the first story about doctors in NYC remarking on a mysterious pneumonia effecting gay men—the beginning of the AIDS crisis. The 1970s was a profound decade of liberation and exploration of personal and sexual freedom and expression. For this exhibition, the Museum staff has dug deep into our archives of over 24,000 objects to tell the story of the 1970s. It was a period of freedom from repression, when the “gay rights” movement was in a nascent stage of development. People were just beginning to think about the possibility of equality. Starting in the 1950s with organizations like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, gays and lesbians began to hone their message and advocate for equality. However, in the late 1960s, gay bars were still raided by the police. But at the Stonewall Inn in NYC’s Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969, things changed. As the police attempted to take patrons away, brave bystanders—mostly gender-variant pioneers—declared enoughwas-enough and encouraged the crowd to resist arrest. The only thing the patrons were guilty of was being true to themselves. While only a small segment of the population knew of the incident at the time, the actions that evening began a movement which could not be stopped. While over half a million American soldiers were fighting in Vietnam, others began a fight for the recognition of gay rights by societal and government institutions. The Gay Liberation Front was founded shortly after the Stonewall riots. Gay community centers
(top) Joan E. Biren (JEB) (b. 1944), Gloria and Charmaine, 1979 (printed 2016), Digital silver halide C-print, 8.75 x 12 in. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Museum purchase. (above) Neil Malcolm Roberts (b. 1953), Untitled, 1977, Silver gelatin print, 8 x 11 in. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Gift of the artist.
The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 56 ● SPRING 2016
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started popping up everywhere. One of the first was at the Gay Activists Alliance at 99 Wooster Street in Soho (the Firehouse). By 1973 the GAA had documented more than 1,000 gay groups nationwide. Following in the footsteps of the anti-war movements, sit-ins and “gay-ins” were conducted to bring attention to civil injustices. While the voices of the demonstrators where being heard, the fact was that only a small portion of the gay population came out to family, friends, and colleagues because of fear of retribution. In the early 1970s, some sexual acts between consenting adults were still illegal across much of the United States. At the same time, the Nixon administration unraveled over the Watergate break-in, people’s faith in government institutions waned. Many continued to believe that homosexuality was not only illegal but a sin. Churches and governments rejected their gay sisters and brothers. Gay men were mysteriously murdered. According to the American Psychological Association, up until 1973, homosexuality was still classified as a psychological disorder. By the end of the decade, well-known celebrities like Anita Bryant led highly publicized campaigns to ensure gays were not allowed equal protection under the law. However, in the face of this oppression, the 1970s was a time when the gay community sought to explore its political boundaries as well as its sense of self. The community’s new found right to express its freedom emboldened those in it to explore their bodies and sexuality, making an impact in art, fashion, and the culture at large. Artists such as Peter Hujar, Diana Davies, Rink Foto, and Harvey Milk sought to document the struggle that was raging around them. While apparently there was not a single “out” gay reporter at a major New York newspaper at the time, smaller newspapers and publications speaking to the gay community sprouted up all over. Publications such as The Advocate, Washington Blade, Gay Community News, New York Native, Gay Sunshine, Fag Rag and many others became popular. Mainstream media also began to pay attention, as real-life gay stories appeared on daytime television, in movies, and in general circulation magazines. Davies, a musician, actress and playwright, served as a photojournalist and captured many key moments in the gay and women’s movements. Hujar’s image was used to promote the first Gay Liberation Day March in 1970 as well as gay culture of the time. Milk, photographer and co-owner of Castro Camera in San Francisco, became one of the first openly gay politicians elected to public office in 1977. He and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were gunned down the following year. Artists
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like Roy Blakey documented the human form simply by finding subjects through advertisements in alternative and gay publications. Kay Tobin and Ellen Shumsky documented many feminist/lesbian activists. Amos Badertscher documented the gritty street and club life he saw in Baltimore. Joan E. Biren (JEB) sought to highlight the diversity she saw within the lesbian community. While sexual freedom was in the air, certainly not all gay people chose to define themselves by their sexual activities. Literary outposts, such as the one Craig Rodwell opened, known as the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop (started
The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 56 ● SPRING 2016
(top) Rink Foto, The First Large Group of Lesbians in the San Francisco Gay Parade, Invited by Harvey Milk, 1974 / 2016, Digital print, 13.4 x 18 in. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Gift of the artist. (above) Kay Tobin Lahusen (Kay Tobin) (b. 1930), Jeri Dilno and Carolyn Innes, 1974 /2016, Digital print. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Museum purchase.
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(above) Marion Pinto (1935–2010), Standing Female Nude, 1973, Oil on canvas, 75.5 in. diam. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Gift of Marion Pinto Estate. (right) Sandra DeSando (b. 1946), lavia, 1978, Graphite on paper, 38 x 31 in. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Gift of Cheryl Gross.
in 1967), and other gay bookstores popped up to offer another point of view. Fred W. McDarah, a prolific documentarian of the period, offers a wonderful portrait of Craig Rodwell. Jonathan Ned Katz took it upon himself to write and publish the first gay American history in 1976, which traced the early gay rights movement to actions taken as far back as the mid-19th century. Founded in 1968, with outposts in nearly every major city, the Metropolitan Community Church grew in the 1970s to offer a spiritual haven to those who sought support when other churches closed their doors to homosexuals. The first chapter of Dignity (a Catholic-based group designed to support LGBTQ members) was set up in 1970. Some sought to discover themselves and their communities through portraiture, fashion and style. In the exhibition, we examine work by Marion Pinto, Peter Flinsch, Rob Hugh Rosen, and Cathy Cade. Saul Bolasni, who worked as an illustrator for major fashion magazines and has work in the Lincoln Center Library as well the National Portrait Gallery, shows us a sense of the fashion and style of the time. Sandra DeSando depicts Flavia Rando of the Lesbian Herstory Archives with panache. Fayette Hauser documented her fellow Cockettes. Gay artists also had significant impact on the art world at the time. Performance art can be seen through the work of photographers.Jimmy DeSana, Peter Hujur, and Charles Henri Ford. DeSana was a key figure in the NYC punk art scene, often documenting the male form in surreal settings, juxtaposing it with inanimate objects. Robert Mapplethorpe’s impact in the art world began in the 1970s. In this exhibition, the Museum will exhibit for the first time its copy of Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio (1977), added to our collection this past winter. The 1970s was a time of sexual freedom and experimentation, and discovery about the body. Some have called it the “me” decade. Emboldened by a Supreme Court decision in 1973 (Roe v. Wade), women were for the first time allowed control over their own bodies and greater access to birth control methods. Many women looked at their own sexuality differently. In this exhibition, we look at work by Tee Corrine, who depicted lesbian sexuality, often documenting romantic and sexual moments between her subjects. We also see the work of Stanley Stellar, Andrew Sichel, Griffin Ward, and Neel Bate (Blade). Much of Blade’s work was confiscated by the New York Police department in the 1940s and 1950s. He continued to make work into the 1970s and 1980s which provided inspiration for other gay artists of the time, as well as generations after.
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A prevalent yet ill-founded theory at the time was that females were the “weaker” sex and effeminate men (i.e., homosexuals) must be weak as well. Popular culture dismissed gay men as “sissies” or “faggots.” In response, many gay men developed a sense of hyper-masculinity to help fight perceptions of inherent weakness perceived to be imbedded in homosexuality. The idea of a sexual “top” and a “bottom” grew, as did an intricate code of sexual activity telegraphed by which pocket a brightly colored handkerchief might be stuffed. Successful designers like Calvin Klein, armed with Bruce Weber photographs, blazoned beautiful muscled male bodies across the nation. The exhibition gives us the opportunity to look at the work of Robert Girard, Delmus Howe, Gerhard Pohl, and George Dudley, who all worked to further that archetype. Dudley, a prolific artist, was one of the first directors of the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation. A founder of the Night of a Thousand Gowns, Dudley died of AIDS-related complications in 1993. Other featured artists who pursued this genre include Tim Bond, Richard Rosenfeld, Neil Malcolm Roberts, Richard Tittlebaum,
(top) Stanley Stellar (b. 1945), Charna, Saul, Sewell, and Michael, 1978/2016, Digital print, 9.2 x 13.75 in. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Gift of the artist. (above) Delmas Howe (b. 1935), Picnic in the Grass, 1979, Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Gift of Angela Tese-Milner and Michael Milner. (right) Saul Bolasni (1916–2012), Untitled, c.1971, Ink and water color, 24 x 18 in. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Gift of the artist.
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The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 56 ● SPRING 2016
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Jim French, and Christopher Makos—each exploring a male-oriented hyper-masculine sense of self. Representative of places where sexual freedom was explored worldwide, the exhibition also focuses on NYC’s piers and the activities in the Meatpacking District. While for some sex in a public place was an act of individual desire, for others it was a conscious political act. Men of that period speak of a time in metropolitan areas where they could have sex with other men, any time of the day or night. Larry Kramer documented his version of life in NYC in his 1978 novel Faggots. The piers were a unique NYC phenomenon, as they served as an artist’s studio as well as a place gay men met for both companionship and public sex. The exhibition will contain a large wall painting by Tava (Gustav Von Will) that was salvaged from the piers before they were destroyed. It was a time when bathhouses, bars, and clubs flourished. Work by Ron Schubert, Sue Kotosh and Frank Melleno show this. Melleno and Schubert take us back to the baths, which were found all over New York at the time. As we look back at the 1970s, it seemed a time when personal freedom permeated everything. We are able—and in fact encouraged—to pursue our true selves. As we look around today, nearly 40 years later, it seems that we are again on the cusp of another, yet undefined, period of enlightenment. We see remarkable changes in civil rights. The queer community today is looking at its own sexuality and relationship to others in new ways, exploring gender and expanding sexual barriers which may lead to a new 21st-century enlightenment. n
(top left) Ellen Shumsky (b. 1941), Women's Consciousness Raising Group; Lower East Side, NYC, 1970/2016, Digital print, 8 x 12 in. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Museum purchase. (top right) Tee A. Corinne (1943–2006), print #5, c. 1979, Collage of silver gelatin prints, 9 x 6.88 in. Courtesy the Lesbian Herstory Archives. (above) Fred W. McDarrah (1926–2007), Craig Rodwell/Oscar Wilde Bookstore October 1969, 1969, Silver gelatin print, 14 x 11 in. Courtesy Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU. (above right) Roy Blakey (b. 1930), Al Gamberg and Don Richardson, 1977, Silver gelatin print, 13.5 x 10.5 in. Collection Leslie-Lohman Museum. Gift of the artist.
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THE MUSEUM ISSUE 56
Balancing the Collection Hunter O’Hanian, Museum Director
(left) K8 Hardy, Fuck You, 2009, Print. Courtesy Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York. © K8 Hardy. (above) Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, Panel from Page 113. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 2012.
I had hardly walked in the door of the apartment of a longtime supporter of the Museum before the questions began. “I want to know where the Museum is going these days. It seems to me that you are showing more conceptual and abstract work. I see more work by women and transgender people.” The questions went on for about 45 minutes. I completed the task behind my visit and secured a donation for new work for the collection. As I walked back to the Museum, donation check firmly in hand, I thought more about where we are going as an institution. The mission of the Leslie-Lohman Museum is to exhibit and preserve art that speaks directly to the many aspects of the LGBTQ experience. Our staff and board take that charge very seriously. It is deeply embedded in our strategic plan—the document by which we function. If you have not seen it, please visit LeslieLohman.org and take a look. In particular, pay attention to the vision for the future section. We view ourselves as an institution dedicated to presenting and preserving the history and humanity of queer sexuality. We are not a place that caters to only one part of the community. We are not a museum afraid to exhibit queer work. Our job is to present works that mainstream museums and institutions have rejected because of its queer content. We will continue to build a collection that speaks to the entire LGBTQ community. Cultural
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institutions, especially museums, have a responsibility to collect and exhibit art that reflects the breadth and depth of the constituency they are established to serve. It can be argued that other museums, in many cases much larger institutions with vast resources, have failed to live up to this responsibility. After studying various museum collections for more than 30 years, in 2012 the Guerilla Girls reported that less than 4% of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum contains work by women artists, failing to reflect the history and humanity of their non-male visitors. A 2006 study of mainstream NYC museums (i.e. the Metropolitan, the NY Historical Society, MOMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the New Museum) found that over a ten-year period (1995-2005) only 4.6% of the exhibitions offered by those institutions included LGBTQ artists or themes. By comparison, 100% of the exhibitions presented by the Leslie-Lohman Museum contain LGBTQ themes, and 13% of the artists represented in Leslie-Lohman’s permanent collection are female or transgender. While we are certainly doing better than the Met, we are not satisfied with this level of representation in our collection. Over the past few years, the Museum has acquired pieces by Lorell Butler, Tee Corrine, Cathy Cade, JEB, Annie Sprinkle, Ruth Bernhard, Patricia Cronin, Deborah Kass, Nan Goldin, Michela Griffo, Berenice Abbott, and many many others. The Foundation and Museum have a long-standing tradition of offering lesbian and
The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 56 ● SPRING 2016
female-centric exhibitions going back to the early 1990s. In recent years, we have purposefully exhibited more work by non-male-presenting artists. It has been a pleasure to borrow and exhibit works by Romaine Brooks, Claude ～eres, Chitra Ganesh, Zackary Cahun, Maria E. Pin Drucker, and so many others. In our upcoming exhibition, The 1970s: The Blossoming of a Queer Englightment, we made strategic loans from the Fales Library, the NYC Public Library, and the Lesbian Herstory Archives to achieve a greater sense of gender balance. Still, we need to go further. We aspire to see the percentage of female and transgender artists in the collection grow beyond 13%. We want that number to increase each year until we reach an acceptable balance. We want to be sure that our collection contains better racial and class diversity. Over the past year, our collections department has begun the process of researching and compiling information on non-male-presenting artists whose works would enrich our already strong collection and provide us with the gender balance necessary to be a truly inclusive LGBTQ art museum. Intern Rachel Davis has done an amazing job in cataloging and researching female and transgender artists for us to consider. There are hundreds of names identified, many with complete biographies and targeted works selected. With your help, we can continue to build the premier LGBTQ collection of the future. n
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News from Prince Street Project Space Rob Hugh Rosen, Deputy Director of Programmatic Operations
Imagining Passageways, Housing Works Annual Client Art Exhibit and Benefit
There is a live performance by Ayakamay at the opening reception, and live performances each day of the exhibition.
Jan 15–17 (Opening Friday, Jan 15, 6–8pm)
Housing Works is a healing community of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. Their mission is to end the dual crises of homelessness and AIDS through relentless advocacy, the provision of life-saving services, and aid to entrepreneurial businesses that sustain their efforts. The intention of this exhibition is to showcase the creative accomplishments of participants in the Housing Works adult healthcare programs. The exhibition provides an opportunity to promote the Housing Works mission and to raise funds to support their artists and art therapy departments.
GENDERLESS, Art of Ayakamay Feb 4–9 (Opening Thursday, Feb 14, 6–8pm)
Ayakamay (b. 1985) is a Japanese-American artist living and working in New York. Her practice encompasses photography, video, and performance art. Her adolescence in a cross-cultural environment strongly influenced her art. GENDERLESS is a series of self-portraits by Ayakamay. Using herself as a subject, the artist attempts to reveal complex relationships between gender and self by questioning social signifiers and cultural coding.
Transfigure, Art of Leon Mostovoy Feb 26–28 (Opening Friday, Feb 26, 6–8pm)
Leon Mostovoy is a transgender artist who has been creating on the front lines of queer and political art movements for decades. Formerly Tracy Mostovoy, Leon started his queer art career producing erotic images for On Our Backs magazine in the early 1980s. Mostovoy’s most recent projects explore transgender identity, transformation, sexuality, and gender roles in contemporary U.S. society. His earlier photographic series have explored the struggles and triumphs of women as they strive for strength and independence living outside the parameters of heteronormative expectations. In 2011, Leon presented his first retrospective, (My) Queer (R)evolution, at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 2015 his 1987-88 Market Street Cinema photography series was exhibited at the ONE Archives, Los Angeles. He has had over 50 shows, including solo and group photography and multi-media exhibitions. Transfigure is a project of corporal self-expression, a celebration of bodies that transcend the gender binary. This project began with the traditional concept of a children’s flipbook—but made up of transgender bodies—created to allow
(left) Kimberly Stevens, A Promised Sunrise #2, 2015, Acrylic on paper, 9 x 12 in. Courtesy of the artist. Art from Imagining Passageways exhibition. (above) Ayakamay, Untitled #1, 2015, Digital print, 36 x 36 in. Courtesy the artist.
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a safe and playful way to explore our bodies. The PSPS installation includes the book, life-size photographs, a film, and an interactive website. Attendees are encouraged to reconfigure the physical book, play on the website, and communicate online using the Transfigure Website Community Forum Page to engage with people outside the walls of the gallery. For more information visit: leonmostovoy.com
Poolside, Art of Gabriel Martinez Mar 11–13 (Opening Friday, Mar 11, 6–8pm)
Gabriel Martinez (b. 1967, US) is a Cuban-American artist and Miami native based in Philadelphia, PA, working in photography, performance, and installation. Martinez received his his B.F.A. from the University of Florida in 1989 and his M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art in 1991. He has participated in many artist-in-residence programs, including Skowhegan, Rosenbach, Fabric Workshop, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Fountainhead, and will be participating in the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s AIR program in May 2016. He has recently exhibited in his first
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institutional solo show, Bayside Revisited, at the Print Center in Philadelphia. Martinez’s multidisciplinary works have been greatly motivated by the themes of loss, celebration, memorial, and cultural identity. His current work reflects his interest in queer history, specifically the period between the Stonewall riots and the outset of the AIDS epidemic. This exhibition presents the artist’s multimedia installation entitled Poolside, which explores the milieu of Fire Island from the 1970s. Included in this exhibition are works inspired by the novels of John Rechy and Wakefield Poole’s iconic film, Boys in the Sand.
The Gym, My Models, and Me, New Work by Bob Ziering Mar 25–27 (Opening Friday, Mar 25, 6–8pm)
Bob Ziering (b.1932, Brooklyn, NY) graduated from New York University with further studies at the School of Visual Arts. Beginning in the 1960s, Ziering gained a reputation as a prominent illustrator with clients that included CBS, NBC, Paul Taylor Dance, and the Metropolitan
The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 56 ● SPRING 2016
(from left to right) Bob Ziering, Pause, 2015, Pastel on paper, 45 x 33 in. Courtesy the artist. Gabriel Martinez, BITS (Poolside 7), 2015, Inkjet image transfer on clear acrylic sheet, 34.75 x 16.5 in. Courtesy the artist, Wakefield Poole, and Samson Projects, Boston. Leon Mostovoy, Transfigure Project, 2015, Digital image, Size varies. Courtesy the artist.
Opera. His passion for wildlife and conservation bore fruit in Twilight of the Gorilla. Addressing species endangerment, the series was exhibited at the New York Zoological Conservancy, the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, and Marywood University in Pennsylvania. More recently Ziering’s passion for Rembrandt resulted in a homage in pastel—Ziering’s signature medium—to the 40 years of self-portraits by the master. The artist was 70 years old when he first presented his gay-themed work to the public in a solo show at the Leslie-Lohman Gallery in 2004. Now, twelve years later in his new exhibition at PSPS, Ziering presents his most recent work, a series of sensual images of
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gym-built robust young men executed in exuberant line and vibrant color. The artist candidly shares, “My involvement with the past satisfied, my lustful self now demanded living, breathing, luscious subjects.” But Ziering also speaks of “the person inside, intrinsic and essential to my mind’s eye.” He describes working with his models as a collaborative process incorporating their ideas, which he considers as important as his own. In fact, Ziering speaks of his art as being “all process... and so exciting!”
Purgatory Pie Press and Bruno Gmünder. The art compiled in this exhibition represents a distinctively personal recollection by the artist of his boyhood and teenage years, when he was coming to terms with the reality of his emerging queerness. Having created a visual vocabulary drawn from favorite childhood toys and pop-up books, Redding strives to fix indelibly his memories of the ephemeral sexual ecstasy and emotional agony of those years, and to share with us a glimpse into his earliest erotic infatuations.
What Is It That Makes My Artwork So Gay? Art of Harvey Redding
Trans and the Notion of Risk, Art of Ianna Book
Apr 15–17 (Opening Friday, Apr 15, 6–8pm)
Apr 22–24 (Opening Friday, Apr 22, 6–8pm)
Harvey Redding (b.1949, Wisconsin) is an artist, designer, and curator who has created diverse projects, ranging from the founding of the LeslieLohman Drawing Studio to a traveling museum for the G.I. Joe action figure. His own artwork has been represented in numerous exhibition spaces, including the Yale University Library, the Centre Georges Pompidou, and Cooper Union. The artist’s publishing credits include books for publishers
Ianna Book (b. 1973, Canada) is a multidisciplinary transsexual artist and activist living and working in Montr´eal. She studied fine arts at Cegep du Vieux-Montr´eal, and visual and media arts at the Universit´e du Qu´ebec ` a Montr´eal. In 2011, she presented her first trans project at Radical Queer Semaine in Montr´eal. During a period of transition (2010-2013), Ianna published Trans Avenue, a photographic essay on transsexuality
(from left to right) Ianna Book, Trans and the Notion of Risk, 2014, Digital photograph, 24 x 20 in. Courtesy the artist. Harvey Redding, The Van Heusen Triplets Touring Candyland, 2008, Digital print from collage, 6 x 4 in. Courtesy the artist.
and the urban context. In 2014, she organized Trans Time, the first trans group art exhibition in Montreal with several international artists. A second iteration will be presented in 2016 at SomoS Arts Project Space in Berlin. Ianna’s work is included in the collection of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Trans and the Notion of Risk presents a collection of self-portraits boldly exploring the idea of risk in social space. The staging of these images reveals the artist living vulnerably, in discomfort, and even in fear, while struggling to flourish in the social sphere. This body of work visually describes the artist’s terror of being unmasked and stigmatized as a trans woman living in a world brimming with prejudice and violence. See more at iannabook.com, facebook.com/iannabook, and twitter.com/iannabook n
The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 56 ● SPRING 2016
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SPECIAL EVENTS ISSUE 56
Events Programming at Leslie-Lohman Museum Jerry Kajpust, Deputy Director for External Relations
We’ve had a very active winter season of programming and events. Also, we’ve made great progress on expanding our audience reach as we now post videos of some of our talks and lectures on our website, which are hosted through the Museum’s Vimeo account. So now there are more ways you can keep up with our lectures if you can’t attend. From our website (LeslieLohman.org), go to: EXPLORE / MULTIMEDIA; or to view via Vimeo.com, search for our account: Leslie-Lohman Museum. In October 2015, we held the release of a monograph of 50 photographs entitled Barmaid by John Arsenault, who worked as a bar-back, or “barmaid” as he liked to call himself, at the Eagle LA. During his time there, he took hundreds of evocative portraits and interior landscapes, mostly with his iPhone. He was drawn to the interplay of light and shadow within the bar’s dark interior at different times of day, and to the interaction between the bar’s staff, patrons, and the gritty, atmospheric landscape. These led to the creation of his book. [Barmaid. Daylight Books, 2015]. Cassandra Langer, the 21st-century biographer of Romaine Brooks (1874–1970), was joined by art historian James Saslow and screenwriter/ translator Suzanne Stroh on a panel as part of the book launch for Romaine Brooks: A Life. The artistic achievements of Romaine Brooks, both as a major expatriate American painter and as a formative innovator in the decorative arts, have long been overshadowed by her fifty-year relationship with writer Natalie Barney and her reputation as a fiercely independent, aloof heiress who associated with fascists in the 1930s. Langer introduces a fresher look from decades of research on Brooks and establishes this groundbreaking artist’s centrality to feminism and contemporary sexual politics as well as to visual culture. [Romaine Brooks: A Life. University of Wisconsin Press, October, 2015]. (Video online) See related article on Page 16. To round out our book events, Nathaniel Siegal and William Coakley hosted Come Hear! 10 Lesbian and Gay Poets: An Evening of Poetry Readings, which featured readings by them and eight other poets—Austin Alexis, Betsy Andrews, Regie Cabico, r erica doyle, Scott Hightower, Sam La Roche, Norman MacAfee, and Mikal Shkreli. All poets were all equally open in exploring sexuality and all the complex happenings that affect us in New York and the world today. Several had their books for sale.
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On November 7, the Museum hosted a prerelease tribute featuring a live performance by Armen Ra and exclusive footage from his award-winning film, When My Sorrow Died: The Legend of Armen Ra and the Theremin, prior to its New York City world premier on November 13th. Performing to a packed audience of more than 80 people, Ra
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(left) John Arsenault, Exit, Self-portrait, 2012, Digital photograph, 15 x 15 in. Courtesy the artist. (above) Come Hear! 10 Lesbian and Gay Poets: An Evening of Poetry Readings. Photo: © 2015 Stanley Stellar. (below) Armen Ra, Still from the film, When My Sorrow Died: The Legend of Armen Ra and the Theremin. Courtesy the artist.
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shared his personal story and journey, and gave a mesmerizing concert on the theremin. The theremin is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact. Armen Ra is an American artist and performer of IranianArmenian descent, who has garnered the admiration of fans on multiple continents. He is considered one of the finest thereminists in the world today. Through pictures and commentary, Allen Ellenzweig presented the extraordinary life of twentieth-century American photographer, George Platt Lynes (1907-1955). Ellenzweig showcased portraits of an amazing cast of characters who peopled Lynes’s relatively short but exciting life, including Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, and Lincoln Kirstein to name a few, and he discussed the major genres in which Lynes excelled: celebrity portraiture, ballet images, surreal imaginings from Greek mythology, fashion photography, and, most especially, pictures of the male nude. This
(above top) Allen Ellenzweig’s lecture, “George Platt Lynes: A Life in Portraits”, showing Lynes’s portrait Francisco Moncion, August 1948. Moncion danced for the New York City Ballet (then the American Ballet). (above) Jessica Yatrofsky, Gabrielle, 2014, Digital-C print. Courtesy the artist. (right) Gregory McGoon, Cover and interior, The Royal Heart, (pub. Pelekinesis).
presentation described how professional and personal friendships were established as part of a cosmopolitan gay life in New York and Paris in the decades before and after World War II. (Video online) We started 2016 with three very exciting events. We screened Cary Cronenwett’s portrait of the late transmale filmmaker-artist-activist Flo McGarrell. The film Peace of Mind is a stirring meditation on collaboration, longing, and loss. While McGarrell was adapting Kathy Acker’s Kathy Goes to Haiti, which was set to star artist and actress Zackary Drucker (Transparent), McGarrell was killed in the 2010 Haitian earthquake. Using footage shot for the unfinished film, clips from past collaborations, and interviews with the queer Haitians McGarrell mentored at FOSAJ (Foundation Art Center of Jacmel, Haiti), Cronenwett imbues this fascinating documentary with lush imagery and a startlingly emotional interiority. Greg McGoon gave an utterly charming reading of his fairy tale, The Royal Heart, accompanied with slides of the beautiful illustrations, to an eagerly captivated audience. The Royal Heart, as described by McGoon, “is a traditionally styled fairy tale featuring a transgender character. The book has universal themes of acceptance, love, and leadership...I loved the idea of introducing this topic to children to allow them to start a dialogue about what it means for someone to be true to themselves.” His other book, Out of the Box, a heartwarming story of the power of one boy’s imagination and the limitless places our creativity can take us, was also available for reading and purchase. [The Royal Heart. Pelekinesis, December 2015. And Out of the Box. Bryce Cullen Publishing, November 2014]. Jessica Yatrofsky, a New York-based artist best known for film and photographic work exploring body politics, beauty, and gender, gave a wonderful lecture showcasing her work and sharing her experiences with various models she used for her photography and film clips. Yatrofsky discussed her practice and the evolution of her photography monograph series, I Heart Boy & I Heart Girl. Her work was included in the exhibition Medium of Desire: An International Anthology of Photography and Video, which can be seen on our website. Those unable to attend our events can still take part in our great programming, as many of our lectures are available online at LeslieLohman.org. n
Leslie-Lohman Events Be sure to check our website and sign up for our weekly emails to stay up-todate with all our tours and events. Also see videos of past events on our site under Explore: Multimedia.
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Queer Threads: Baltimore, Boston, and Beyond John Chaich, Curator
After its January 2014 debut at Leslie-Lohman, the Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community exhibition has traveled to Baltimore and Boston. First, the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) hosted the exhibition in its Decker Gallery from December 11, 2015 through March 13, 2016. “Given the critical and audience reception Queer Threads received in New York, we knew the exhibition would engage our graduate and undergraduate program members and Baltimore’s diverse community groups,” noted Gerald Ross, Director of
Exhibitions at MICA. As one of the country’s oldest and leading art schools, MICA’s campus afforded a range of interdisciplinary programming. A roundtable discussion, Queer Threads Unraveled explored the relationship between queerness and fiber practice, history and criticism, and pedagogy. Scholars Julia Bryan-Wilson, Ph.D., of the University of California at Berkeley, and Ann Cvetkovich, Ph.D., of the University of Texas at Austin, offered insights from their publications and research, and MICA Fiber faculty Kristine Woods lent perspective as a queer fiber artist and educator. The roundtable was moderated by Jeanne Vaccaro, Ph.D., of Indiana University at Bloomington, who reviewed Queer Threads for The Journal of Modern Craft in 2014. MICA’s Critical Studies, Exhibitions, Fiber, and Painting Departments hosted a lecture by artist Harmony Hammond. A pioneer of the feminist art movement whose career spans four decades, Hammond spoke on queer abstraction, content and materiality, framed by her featured piece, Girdle. (Hammond’s Tiny Aperture #3 and A Queer Reader are recent additions to the Leslie-Lohman
(above) At the MICA opening, guests select buttons from L J Roberts’s cascading textile, The Queer Houses of Brooklyn. Courtesy the Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Elaine Reuben. © 2011 L J Roberts. Photo: Andrew Copeland/MICA. (left) Liz Collins’s site-specific installation, PRIDE, is accompanied by an excerpt of Sabrina Gschwandtner’s film, No Idle Hands, which documents the public action in which uniformed workers created Collins’s massive pride flag textile. Courtesy the artists. Photo: Rene Trevino.
Museum collection.)
In concert with Queer Threads, the Fiber Department and the American Craft Council hosted a lecture titled Feminist and Queer Decorative Surfaces by Elissa Auther, Ph.D. Auther is the author of the acclaimed book, String, Felt, Thread and the Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art, and is the inaugural Windgate Research Curator, a joint appointment at the Museum of Arts and Design and the Bard Graduate Center in collaboration with The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design. The Center for Craft, Creativity &
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Design funded a Windgate Museum intern from MICA’s curatorial studies program to support exhibition planning. Featured artist and MICA Fiber faculty Aaron McIntosh taught a related course at MICA blending queer and fiber history and theory with studio practice and resulting in an exhibition curated by the class that featured work created in response to Queer Threads. Students also learned from a series of intimate gallery talks featuring
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artists Chiachio and Giannone, Liz Collins, Jesse Harrod, Rebecca Levi, John Thomas Paradiso, Sheila Pepe, and Nathan Vincent. Baltimore’s multicultural setting created opportunities for community engagement. The Queer Threads, Common Ties program featured community artist-activists discussing the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality in parallel to the unique struggle of Fiber Art in the artistic canon. McIntosh led a hands-on workshop, Invasive,
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(left) By pulling strips of painted cloth as brush strokes through a crocheted netting, Harmony Hammond offers an early queering of abstract painting and fiber art in her 1971 piece, Girdle. Private collection. Courtesy the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York. Art © Harmony Hammond/Licensed by VAGA, New York. (below left) In his 2010 work, Castrato as [the] Revolution, Cape Town-based artist Athi-Patra Ruga utilizes embroidery and appliqu´e on a found petit point tapestry to explore masculinity in traditional and contemporary South Africa. Private Collection. Courtesy the artist and WHATIFTHEWORLD Gallery, Cape Town. Photo: Hayden Phipps. (below right) Aaron McIntosh’s Road to Tennessee, 2015, is named after the traditional quilting pattern that the artist deconstucts in this digital textile print with vintage erotica and fabrics. 71 x 54 inches. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Nick Clifford Simko.
which collected stories of Southern LGBTQ experiences into a quilt of cloth kudzu leaves. Inspired by the community collaboration that created the RuPaul Cross Stitch Animation on view in the exhibition, MICA’s Fiber Department also brought in artist Aubrey Longley-Cook to work with community members and students on a similar project embroidering homages to Baltimore queer icons. Aubrey Longley-Cook noted: “I’ve found that these workshops create an intimate opportunity to bring together queer
people through the sharing of embroidery techniques and art practices. I’m honored to have helped document and celebrate Baltimore’s diverse and distinct queer legacy.” After MICA, Queer Threads will travel to the Boston Center for the Arts’ Mills Gallery, where it will remain on view from April 29 through July 10. For more than 40 years, the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) has served as a not-for-profit multidisciplinary arts center supporting artists who create, perform, and
exhibit new works. The Center develops new audiences and connects the arts to community. The Mills Gallery at the BCA provides a platform for engagement with new ideas and is dedicated to presenting innovative contemporary works by local, regional, national, and international artists and curators. “We are excited to bring Queer Threads to Boston, a city with a rich history of innovation in the realms of both fiber and gender, and in a neighborhood that served as an important stop along the first official gay pride march in Boston, in 1971,” notes Randi Hopkins, Associate Director of Mills Gallery. “Queer Threads offers multiple points of entry into one of the most dynamic art conversations of recent decades, examining identities through the lens of thread-based materials and processes.” A range of public programming is planned, including regular tours led by regional artists, activists, and scholars, as well as an artists’ talk coproduced with the Fiber Department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt). Soon after the exhibitions closed, a companion coffee-table volume, co-edited by Todd Oldham and published by AMMO Books, will be launched by late summer. The cloth-cover book will feature full-color spreads of works by 30 international fiber artists (from and beyond the exhibition) who are interviewed by a mix of makers and thinkers across art, design, fashion, music, and other milieux, including Jonathan Adler, Michael Cunningham, Kathleen Hanna, Glenn Ligon, Tim Gunn, Mickalene Thomas, and others. Leslie-Lohman Executive Director Hunter O’Hanian commented on the momentum of Queer Threads: “It’s rewarding to see something born at Leslie-Lohman create such discourse and engagement. We could not be more proud of how this exhibition has evolved and reached a wide range of audiences outside our own museum space.” n ........................................................................................................................
John Chaich is an independent curator, designer, and writer living in New York City.
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BOOKS ISSUE 56
Romaine Brooks: Understood at Last A Review of: Cassandra Langer, Romaine Brooks: A Life Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015 James M. Saslow
When the first biography of expatriate American painter Romaine Brooks (1874-1970) appeared in 1974, Stonewall culture was a mere five years old, and my review of that book was thrilled to welcome one of the first serious studies of quasi-forgotten lesbians. Alas, author Meryle Secrest, not clued in to what little queer history had developed by then, fell back on Freudian clich´es to reduce this courageously unconventional artist to a depressive recluse. Secrest proposed that the artist’s eerie drawings and bitingly perceptive portraits of early-1900s culturati revealed little but the crippling scars of an unstable, unloved childhood. Now comes Cassandra Langer, herself one of the pioneers of modern feminist/queer art history, who deploys 40 years of raised consciousness to draw a richer, more nuanced, and more positive portrait. This fascinating life-and-works will render her predecessor’s text obsolete—and it’s a good read, too. Two key contributions distinguish this biography from its ancestors: more factual information and more sophisticated interpretation. Langer’s tale is less burdened by pathologizing assumptions about gay psychology and more attuned to the complexities of relationships among accomplished women in the era of growing female emancipation. Brooks traveled in the Paris-London-New York circles that invented the New Woman, whose gender-bending garb and masculine seriousness embodied feminist claims on traditionally male arenas. Wealthy lesbians were legion in this nonconformist world, and Brooks was the first artist to base a career on sapphic patronage, typified by stone-butch Una Troubridge (lover of Radclyffe Hall, the author of Well of Loneliness). Langer has chased down innumerable new facts about Brooks in documents, letters, and diaries. Most crucially, she incorporates recent discoveries about ´Elisabeth de Gramont, a titled patron whose central role in Brooks’s drama was previously unknown. Romaine’s loving but stormy six-decade relationship with author Natalie Barney is legendary, but Langer reveals that their duet was actually a trio, with seductive “Lily” playing an equal part. Made privy to intimate glimpses of the exponential increase in emotional and logistical dynamics when a pair becomes a triangle, readers come away awed and delighted by one of the first open marriages among passionately attracted yet
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(above) Cover, Cassandra Langer, Romaine Brooks: A Life. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Featuring detail of Romaine Brooks, Au bord de la mer (At The Seaside, self-portrait), 1914, Oil on canvas, 41.375 x 26.75 in. Mus´ee de la Coop´eration Franco-Americaine, Bl´erancourt, France. (right) Romaine Brooks, Una, Lady Troubridge, 1924, Oil on canvas, 46.25 x 26.875 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC.
fiercely independent women. As for interpretation, Secrest was not an art historian, and Langer outstrips her in sympathetic analysis of individual works. She demonstrates how Brooks’s ideal of androgynous, heroic, yet erotic femininity dared to redefine gender and sexual norms. While many found Brooks’s portraits cold, Langer explains how that air of ironic detachment bespeaks her unshrinking honesty and refusal to sentimentalize her female sitters as centuries of tradition had done. Most broadly, where Secrest faulted Brooks for avoiding the radical Cubist styles emerging from the circles around Gertrude Stein (a Paris neighbor Brooks disliked), Langer credits her for propagating an alternative modernism that led, in part, to Surrealism. Brooks’s star has long glimmered in the
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constellation of lesbian/queer culture. Through the prism of Langer’s tireless research and intelligent yet conversational style, the brilliance of her unique personal saga is now both magnified and refracted into a bigger, more colorful rainbow of love and art. n ........................................................................................................................
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).
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Educational Programming at the Museum Em Miller, Leslie-Lohman Museum Education Coordinator
Educational programming at the Museum will continue to grow in 2016, anchored by Guest Docent Tours and the Leslie-Lohman Speakers Series. The goal of these ongoing programs is to create opportunities for learning and dialogue between artists and our expanding audience. The Guest Docent Tour program began in 2013 with Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community as a way to facilitate conversation around the artwork and themes within the exhibition. Since then, tours have been led by artists, academics, and curators with expertise in various fields to provide diverse perspectives of work on display which is both on loan and from the Museum’s collection. Guest docent tours are free and open to the public. Be sure to check leslielohman.org for future program dates. The autumn 2015 schedule of the Leslie-Lohman Speakers Series included Attila Richard Lukacs, Barbara Hammer, and three screenings of Let the Record Show, followed by panel discussions with the filmmakers, Demetrea and Rebekah Dewald, and various artists and activists from the film. Over 325 people attended the autumn Speakers Series events.
THE 2016 SPRING SPEAKERS SERIES February 25 The spring season kicked off with artist Leon Mostovoy’s Transfigure lecture at the Museum. During the program, the audience was encouraged to interact with the project website transfigureproject.com. The artist’s goal is to create synergy by connecting trans communities regardless of locale. Mostovoy’s lecture preceded his Transfigure exhibition at the Prince Street Project Space February 26-28.
Leon Mostovoy, Transfigure Project, 2015. Digital image, Size varies. Courtesy of the artist.
March 14 Amelia Jones, Chair of the Visual Culture Department at McGill University, lectured at the Museum. Jones is one of the most well recognized queer feminist art historians today. She has lectured throughout the world and her recent publications include essays on performance art histories and theories, queer feminist art and theory, and feminist curating. April 27 Artist, Sophia Wallace, will wrap up the Spring Speakers Series. Wallace is an American conceptual artist and photographer who uses images, video, and mixed media to explore alterity. She focuses on how otherness is constructed visually on the gendered, sexualized, racialized body. Her large-scale installation—a monumental wall of texts which challenge phallocentric biases in science, law, philosophy, politics, and the art world—CLITERACY, 100 Natural Laws, 2012, was included in the Museum’s 2014 exhibition, After Our Bodies Meet: From Resistance to Potentiality, curated by Alexis Heller.
Speakers Series events are free, open to the public, and start at 6:30pm. Funding for this series has been received in part from the generous support of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. n ...................................................................................................................
Em Miller is the Education Coordinator at LeslieLohman Museum and Administrative Coordinator at Visual Thinking Strategies. Em is a school and museum educator and will complete her graduate degree in arts and cultural management at Pratt Institute in May. (far left) Sophia Wallace, CLITERACY 100 Natural Laws, 2012. Wood, acrylic, and vinyl, with electrified neon tubing, and Plexiglas, 120 x 156 in. Courtesy of the artist. (left) Barbara Hammer and Kris Grey, Leslie-Lohman Speakers Series, 2015. Photo: Em Miller.
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Migrating Archives— Surrogates from Elsewhere E.G. Crichton, Exhibition Curator
Archivi Migranti—Surrogates from Elsewhere was an exhibition at the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna in November 2015, coordinated as part of the annual Bologna Gender Bender Festival. It included work representing the Leslie-Lohman Museum. The invitation to create this show came from the Cassero LGBT Center in Bologna, and specifically from its Centro di Documentazione director, Sara De Giovanni. I met De Giovanni in 2012 at a conference in Amsterdam focused on queer archive practices. At this conference, I started to build my umbrella project, Migrating Archives for which I collaborated with archivists, historians, curators, and other activists engaged in preserving LGBTQ histories. Twenty-three international organizations, including Cassero, initially participated by selecting two “delegate” archives to stand in for their larger collection, each based on a specific person’s life. Using images and text, I created an ad hoc exhibit at the beautiful Openbare Bibliotheek (Public Library), home to the Dutch organization IHLIA that sponsored the conference. This collection soon evolved into a traveling exhibit that currently represents 13 international organizations. Migrating Archives: LGBT Delegates from Collections Around the World, opened at the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco in early 2013. On view were 7 X 2-foot printed panels, one for each organization, and a video in which several of the archivists speak about the significance of their delegate archives. At the end of 2013, the exhibit traveled to the James Branch Cabell Library at Virginia Commonwealth University, where it helped inaugurate a new direction for artists working in the VCU Library system. Their website states: “Migrating Archives: LGBT Delegates from Collections around the World approaches queer history through the vantage points of individual stories. This innovative show from San Francisco’s GLBT History Museum merges art and history, archives, and real lives. It combines evocative materials, photos, and artifacts that portray the experiences of queer individuals from the past.” This past summer, the Leslie-Lohman Museum became the 13th organization represented in the Migrating Archives traveling display. It joined forces with the British National Archives, GALA in Johannesburg, ALGA in Melbourne, Labrisz in Budapest, Cassero in Bologna, Fonds Suzan Daniel in Belgium, the Glasgow Women’s Library, the
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Hall-Carpenter Archives of the London School of Economics, Adarna Food and Culture Center in the Philippines, rukus! in London, and the JBC Library at VCU. Leslie-Lohman chose the archives of artists Marion Pinto and Neel Bate (aka Blade) to represent their larger collection. Pinto, a close woman friend of the founders, painted large intricately lush nudes, often of men. Bate worked mostly in drawing, rendering exquisitely erotic male scenes that anticipated Tom of Finland. To find out more about the
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Installation view, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Nov. 2015, showing surrogate gifts: vinyl mixed-media tapestry representing Azu Udogu’s body map (Johannesburg, SA); plumed hat based on National Gallery portrait of Mademoiselle de Beaumont, Chevalier D’Eon (the National Archives have his/her calling card); the Labrisz t-shirt; row of books on pedestal based on a photo of the founder of Glasgow Women’s Library, Jackie Forster standing next to a book shelf in the archives. Surrogate gifts created by E.G. Crichton, October 2015.
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(far left) Leslie-Lohoman Museum delegate archive representing Marion Pinto and Neel Bate (aka Blade). (left top) Wood cutting board with erotic carving and painting, modeled on objects made by Roger Vertongen (1929-1989) in the Fonds Suzan Daniel archive, Belgium, 17 x 12 in. (left) Post card written by Lauro to Doming (front) reproduced from original found postcard. Collection Giney Villar and Beth Angsioco, Adarna Restaurant, Quezon City, Philippines. No one knows if Doming ever received these cards, or even if he was a real person. One in a set of four reproduced a giveaways, 6 x 4 in. (above) Marry Me: Illuminated Proposals of Marriage Created by Lesbian Artists, 40-page book that includes an introduction by the two curators, Meredith Noll and Sue Weller, plus images and credits for artists.
migrating archives of these 13 organizations, access my website at egcrichton.sites.ucsc. edu/migrating-archives-delegates. Archivi Migranti—Surrogates from Elsewhere became an expanded version of the traveling exhibit. Each of the organizations in my migration web had already entrusted me with images and text for the printed panels. For the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna exhibit, I added something new: I asked my contacts to describe a key object in their collections that could metaphorically travel to Bologna as a surrogate gift for the host organization Cassero. This description allowed me to fabricate an array of provocative items that became the spatial
“body” of the exhibition. Archives traveled across borders once again, were translated into Italian, and became dimensional in diverse forms such as an erotic tray and cutting board set (Fonds Suzan Daniel), a plumed hat modeled on an 18th-century transgender portrait painting (The British National Archives), and a shelf of books based on the Glasgow Women’s Library. For the Leslie-Lohman gift, I received documentation from a 2004 exhibit called Marry Me: Illuminated Proposals of Marriage Created by Lesbian Artists, curated by Meredith Noll and Sue Weller. I transformed this material into a large coffee-table art book now residing in both the Cassero and the Leslie-Lohman libraries. Another new component in the exhibition was a video projection of animated text and voices that formed an extended conversation between archived subjects across time, language, and geography, all based on actual words from the archives.
Archivi Migranti—Surrogates from Elsewhere became a collective portrait of 13 international archive organizations by providing a glimpse into some of the histories they preserve. Over the course of a week, 400 visitors wandered through text and image, sculptural displays, audio recordings, and projected video to meet 26 incredibly diverse individuals from our past. They listened to Australian lesbian Monte Punshun’s interview at age 104, read a visual body map by Nigerian transgender immigrant to South Africa Azu Udogu, took samples from printed stacks of four early-20th-century postcards written by a Filipino to his lover (in three languages), walked under an enormous t-shirt modeled after the “No Misfits” one Labrisz designed, and listened to an aria composed to honor California “Pianoman” Larry DeCaesar. With the helpful flexibility of art strategies, archives were again able to leave their home shelves and interact. Materials precious to each collection were put in motion, sometimes crossing national borders more easily than we can. For people whose traces are so often erased, archives are a way of creating our own lineage and Archivi Migranti was another step in this very queer process of historical self-creation. n ........................................................................................................................
E.G. Crichton is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher who lives in San Francisco. In her work, she makes use of a range of art strategies, mediums, and technologies to explore social issues and specific histories. Archives of one kind or another serve as both a starting point and an infrastructure; creative collaboration across disciplines is often a critical component. Her work has been exhibited in art institutions and as public installations in Europe, Asia, Australia, and across the United States. She is a professor of art at the University of California in Santa Cruz.
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THE COLLECTION ISSUE 56
Leslie-Lohman Collection Continues to Grow The Leslie-Lohman Museum is very delighted that the collection of our unique institution continues to grow. We strive to represent the best art that speaks to and is made by the LGBTQ community— preserving our history. Acquisition of work by the Leslie-Lohman Museum happens in a variety of ways. First and foremost are donations of artwork by artists, artists’ families, collectors, and individuals. In addition, individuals have supported us with large monetary donations targeted for the purchase of a specific work of art. Members of the Pinto-Wight Society make annual pledges of $1,000 used to purchase additional works of art. If you are interested in making a donation of artwork or funds for future acquisitions, please feel free to contact Museum Director Hunter O’Hanian, or Wayne Snellen and Branden Wallace in the Collections Department. The collection now encompasses over 24,000 objects. Since the beginning of 2016, 213 new donations have been cataloged. The Accessions Committee, chaired by board member Robert W Richards, reviews the collections and determines which work will be added to the permanent collection. A total of 1,581 objects are now in the permanent collection. The Collections Department led by Wayne Snellen, Deputy Director for Collections, and Branden Wallace, Collections Manager, is aided by many volunteers and interns. They diligently
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(above) George Dureau, Raymond Maxwell Hall, ca 1979, Vintage silver gelatin print, 15.5 x 15.25. Gift of John L. Sullivan in memory of Chet Ernest Pourclau. (top right) Jean Cocteau, Portrait d'un jeune homme au tub (Rimbaud), n.d., Pencil on paper, 13.75 x 10.5. Foundation purchase with funds provided by Ronald Csuha and Cecil Yarbrough. (right) Jess Dugan, Julian Anton, 2011, Color photograph. 24 x 19 in. Gift of Hunter O'Hanian and Jeffry George in honor of Andr´e St. Clair joining The Board of Directors. (below) Ernesto Pujol, Gulliver's Dream (Bare Arm), 1999, Color photographic print, 43 x 63 in. Gift of the artist.
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continue to catalog, secure missing ownership documentation, update artists’ biographies, and photograph our ever-expanding collection. If you are interested in volunteering in the Collections Department to assist with this work, please contact either Wayne Snellen or Branden Wallace No experience is necessary. Here are some recent new additions to the collection. Without the support of our donors, we would not be able to build the collection. n
(top left) Patrick Angus, Untitled, c 1980, Graphite on paper, 9 x 12 in. Gift of Douglas Blair Turnbaugh. (top right) Ken Probst, Homage to Michelangelo, 1997, Silver gelatin print. 11 x 14 in. Gift of Richard Raymond. (above) Berenice Abbott, Photo of Marianne Moore, c 1950, Silver gelatin print, 10 x 12.5 in. Museum purchase. (right) Diana Davies, Untitled, c 1970, Digital photograph (test print), 11 x 14 in. Gift of Alexis Heller. ⒸNYPL.
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EXHIBITION ISSUE 56
Galleries of Interest See Upcoming LLM Exhibitons on Back Page; See PSPS Exhibitons on Page 11.
NEW YORK CITY
BROOKLYN AND THE BRONX
Better Being Restaurant, 537 9th Av., NYC, betterbeing.net Jul 14-Nov 16 Joseph Cavalieri: Hot Glass in Hell’s Kitchen
Figureworks 168 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY, figureworks.com Apr 29-Jun5 Michael Sorgatz: New Work
BGSQD The Center, 208 W 13 St., NYC bgsqd.com Casa de Costa, 405 East 61 St., NYC, casadecosta.com thru May 26 Gio Black Peter: If We Do Not Destroy Ourselves ClampArt, 521-531 W. 25 St., NYC, clampart.com Apr 9-May 21 John Rattia: Tease; Apr 9-May 21 Henry Hornstein: Histories Daniel Cooney Fine Art, 508-526 W. 26 St. danielcooneyfineart.com Apr 21 —Arlene Gottfried: Bacalitos & Fireworks Envoy Enterprises, 87 Rivington St. NYC, envoyenterprises.com Emmanuel Fremin Gallery 547 W. 27 St., New York, NY
The Bronx Museum, 1040 Grand Concourse Bronx, NY, bronxmuseum.org, Jul 13-Sep 25 Art AIDS America
NORTHEAST A Gallery, 192 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA agalleryart.com DeLuca, 432 Commercial St., Provincetown, MA pattydelucagallery.com Firehouse Gallery, 8 Walnut Street, Bordentown, NJ, firehousegallery.com Work by Eric Gibbons Hudson County Community College, 71 Sip Av., Jersey City, NJ, hccc.edu thru May 1 Stanley Stellar: Looking Back/Looking Forward: NYC’s Gay Pride Parades 19791995, photos, curated by Hunter O’Hanian Lyman-Eyer Gallery, 432 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA, lymaneyerart Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St, Boston, MA bcaonline.org Apr 22-Jul 10 Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community Rice/Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St., Provincetown, MA ricepolakgallery.com thru Jul 7 Group Exhibition Jul 8Jul 27 Patrick Webb paintings The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, PA, warhol.org thru May 8 Michael Chow aka Zhou Yinghua: Voice for My Father; Jun 4-Aug 28 Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei Wessel + O’Connor Fine Art 7 N. Main St., Lambertville, NJ, wesseloconnor.com
Tino Rodriguez (born 1965), Eternal Lovers, 2010. Oil on wood, 18 × 24 in. Private collection. Photo courtesy the artist. See the Bronx Museum, Art AIDS America, opening July 13.
Antebellum Gallery, 1643 N Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood, CA, antebellumgallery.blogspot.com Center for Sex and Culture 2261 Market St., San Francisco, CA sexandculture.org
Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square E, NYC, nyu.edu/ greyart Apr 19-July 9 Art for Every Home: Associated American Artists 1934–2000
Coagula Curatorial, 974 Chung King Rd, Los Angeles CA coagulacuratorial.com
Jadite Gallery, 413 W. 50 St. jadite.com
Fotofest International at at Silver Street Studios, 2000 Edwards St. Houston, TX fotofest.org
La MaMa La Ga lleria, 47 Great Jones St. lamama.org/ lagalleria May 26-Jun 12 Mark Tambella: New Painting; Jun 16-Jul 9 Ingo Swann: Remote View 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 P•P•O•W, 535 West 22nd St., NYC, ppowgallery.com Apr 21-May 21 Carlos Motta: Deviations multi disciplinary work exploring counter-narratives Team Gallery 83 Grand St. NYC teamgal.com May 5-Jun 5 Gert & Uwe Tobias: Drawings and Sculptures The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave., NYC metmuseum.org thru Jul 17 Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort St. NYC whitney.org Jun 17-Sep 25 Danny Lyon: Message to the Future photographs
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WEST
GLBT History Museum, 4127 18 St., San Francisco, CA, glbthistory.org/museum Ongoing 8 Exhibitions on Queer History; thru Jul 4 Feminists to Feministas 27 posters 1970s to 1990s JDC Fine Art 2400 Kettner Blvd, #208, San Diego, CA thru May 28 Jennifer Greenburg: Revising History ONE Archives Gallery & Museum, 909 W. Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA onearchives.org thru Jul 31 M. Lamar: Funeral Doom Spiritual; thru Jul 31 FUCK! Loss Desire Pleasure; 1200 North Vista St. W. Hollywood, CA thru Jul 10 Cock, Paper, Scissors collage by 15 artists
Leslie J. Anderson, Bound Muscle, 2014, Shoe polish on butcher paper, 30 x 38 in. Anderson is a lesbian artist, activist, educator, and master bootblack. See Naked Leather, Leather Archives & Museum. The Advocate & Gochis Galleries, 1125 N. McCadden Pl., Los Angeles, CA, lagaycenter.org Tom of Finland Foundation 1421 Laveta Terrace, Los Angeles, CA http://tomoffinlandfoundation.org
MIDWEST Leather Archives & Museum, 6418 N. Greenview Ave. Chicago, IL leatherarchives.org thru Jun 5 Leslie J. Anderson: Naked Leather; Jul 2 — Leather People of Color curated by Alisa Swindell Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston, IL blockmuseum.northwestern.edu thru Jul 17 A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s–1980s PHD, 2300 Cherokee St. Saint Louis, MO phdstl.com Jun 7-Jul 19 Selfie Stl photography
SOUTH Stonewall Museum, 2157 Wilton Dr., Wilton Manors, FL stonewallnationalmuseum.org thru May 1 Here & Now: Queer Geographies in Contemporary Photography
EUPOPE Amsterdam IHLIA, Oosterdokskade 143, Amsterdam, ihlia.nl thru May 1 Whisper Their Love...: Vintage Lesbian Pulp Covers from IHLIA Collection; May 2-Jun 10 Pride Photo Award (re. human rights); Jun 16-Aug 29 Gijsen flikker op (Gijsen, Get Lost) Re. start of Roze Zaterdag (Pink Saturday, Dutch Christopher Street Day)
Berlin NGBK, Oranienstrasse 25 ngbk.de thru May 1 Father Figures Are Hard To Find Schwules Museum, Lutzowstrasse 73, Berlin, schwulesmuseum.de thru May 8 The Art of Beautiful Appearance; thru May 12 30 Years of Lust for Collecting; Sara Davidmann: Ken.To Be Destroyed; thru Jun 27 SuperQueeroes: LGBT ComicBook Heroes and Heroines; May 20-Sep 18 Millionaires Can Be Trans—You Are So Brave; Jun 23— Dandies, Robert W Richards and others
Groningen, NL Galerie MooiMan, Noorderstationsstraat 40, 9717KP Groningen, NL, mooi-man.nl
Madrid La Fresh Gallery, Conde de Aranda 5, Madrid, lafreshgallery.com Ongoing Bruce LaBruce, Gorka Postigo, Nicol´as Santos, Brian Kenny, Slava Mogutin; thru May 12, Iglesias Mas: Inserts
Munich
Root Division, 1131 Mission St., SF, CA rootdivision.org Jun 8-Jun 25 ISO Queer Gods & The Gods Sure Are Queer 2, LGBTQ themes in religious iconography
Kunstbehandlung/Saatchi Gallery 40 Müller Strasse 40, Munich, kunstbehandlung.de
Sin City Gallery, 107 E. Charleston Blvd, #100, Las Vegas, NV, sincit ygallery.com
Au Galerie au Bonheur du Jour, 1 rue Chabanais, Paris, aubonheurdujour.net Photos, drawings, publications
Team Gallery 306 Windward Ave., Venice CA, teamgal.com
Mus´ee de l'erotisme 72 Boulevard de Clichy, Paris musee-erotisme.com n
The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 56 ● SPRING 2016
Paris
WOOSTER STREET WINDOW GALLERY ISSUE 56
inti.mate Video Work by Sidney Mullis February 14 – May 12, 2016 The Wooster Street Window Gallery is featuring the work of multimedia artist Sydney Mullis, with four videos from her Mating Ritual Series: Lumpbutt bouncer, Ball-tipped shaker, Pinknibbed popper, and Wiggle biddy. The videos are at once humorous, aggressive, and challenging. In the Mating Ritual Series videos, Mullis performs as invented animals in elaborate costumes/bodysuits to build a domain of alternative biology and culture. Interested in what constitutes “sexy,” Mullis’s video series stems from the study of rap music and videos that instruct women how to perform their sex appeal. Mullis’s kingdom of invented creatures, however, is not suggesting itself as something to be strived for—it is a visual playground to speculate what the boundaries are of gender performance in the present and for the future. The video’s lyrics are evocative of mating rituals for contemporary culture, which often directs women to “push it,” “shake it,” or “wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.” The audio was gleaned from recordings of the voices of people identifying as women when asked, “If you were to approach a person and entice them sexually with the word “bounce” or “wiggle,” what would it sound like?” After some practice attempts, their voices were taped to be later fragmented and looped to accompany the animal’s movement. In the artist’s own words: “Believing that I live in a space where my gender is culturally dictated and simultaneously conflated with my sexuality, I don the guises of these animals to build a menagerie of alternative biology and culture. By playing dress-up, an activity usually engaged by children, I enter a childlike mindset to concentrate on experiences that were crucial to my development. I portray imagined sexes and genders to understand pre-existing constructions of how “woman” is realized, and, furthermore, performed. Combining adult content with materials suitable for children’s crafts, I explore what it means to be ‘woman’.” Mullis grew up dancing, and although she no longer dances, it gave her the knowledge of how a body can move and how it looks to an audience. As an undergraduate sculpture major, she also enrolled in costume, prop, and set design courses, and did a lot of theater work—working closely with two set design professors who taught her a lot about how to make something look like it is something else. This all informed the making process and prop aesthetic of her currnet sculptural work. Mullis admires the work of such artists and choreographers as Pina Bausch, Crystal Pite, Ronen Koresh, Kate Gilmore, Desiree Holman, and Janine Oleson. (If you don’t know these creators, they are well worth a visit to the internet to explore.) Mullis is currently pursuing her MFA with a concentration in sculpture at Pennsylvania State University, where she also teaches beginning sculpture. Her undergraduate studies were at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the Berlin Weissensee School of Art in Berlin. She is looking forward to her residency at Ox-Bow in the summer of 2016. There will be an artist reception May 5, 2016, 6-8pm. For more about Sydney Mullis please visit: sidneymullis.com. n Sydney Mullis, Mating Rituals, (top to bottom) Pink-nibbed Popper, Ball-tipped Shaker, Lumpbutt Bouncer, and Wiggle Biddy, Single channel video projections looped with sound, Life-size, 2015. Courtesy the artist.
The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ● NO 56 ● SPRING 2016
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Upcoming at the Leslie-Lohman Museum
Brian Buczak (1954-1987), Trompe L’Oeil, Death, 1980, Acrylic and oil on board, 19.5 x 14.375 in. Courtesy the Estate of Brian Buczak, and Geoffrey Hendricks.
A Deeper Dive 26 Wooster St. July 8 – September 25, 2016 This exhibition is comprised of eight artists, diverse in age, race, and gender, some alive and some who have died. Together their work gives voice to the personal and the social; the contemplative and the experiential; the poetical and the political; the body present and the body absent—all key modes towards understanding why much work about AIDS doesn’t look like works about AIDS. Born out of Art AIDS America an exhibition which has been touring the U.S.— ONE Archives & Museum, West Hollywood, CA (preview); Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA; Zuckerman Museum of Art, Atlanta — opens at the Bronx Museum of the Arts July 13, 2016. The Leslie-Lohman Museum is a sponsor of the national tour of Art/AIDS/America. Co-curated by Jonathan D. Katz and Andrew Barron