Please be advised that the Museum is closed the weekend of March 5, through March 7, 2021. Timed ticketing is available for future dates.
THROUGH MAY 9, 2021
ON VIEW
THROUGH MAY 25, 2021
WATCH FILM THROUGH FEB 28
OCT 18, 2020 - OCT 2021
OCT 7, 2020 - MAY, 2021
![Our Second Tuesday Tours kick-off next Tuesday, March 9, 3-4 pm! Join Leslie-Lohman Museum teaching artist Edwin González-Ojeda (@edvroom) for a virtual tour highlighting works from our current exhibitions "Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell” and “Dissolution".
“Show and Tell” is the first comprehensive retrospective of photographer Laura Aguilar (1959-2018), assembling more than 70 works produced over three decades. & “DISSOLUTION”, features works of art created by the first two cohorts of the annual Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship 2017-19.
We invite visitors of all ages to join this one-hour participatory program. To register, head to the 🔗 in our profile! Can't make it this month? Learn more about our upcoming free monthly tours via our website at LeslieLohman.org 🌈
[📸 Laura Aguilar, "At Home with the Nortes," 1990. © Laura Aguilar / Courtesy of the Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016 and @ucla_csrc.]
#LeslieLohmanMuseum](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/156079404_2838278869761945_2104188485023384111_n.jpg?_nc_cat=109&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=uByJvbLMkV4AX90-wZR&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=8ef4379a24ea65409237d540d2e24e54&oe=6069363E)
![Chitra Ganesh (@chitraganeshbkny)'s site-specific public art installation, “A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask” wraps the exterior windows of the Museum with images of queer protest, survival, and joy. Temporally layered and visually abundant the installation is an expansive meditation on queer history, New York City, and queer futurity.
From where ever you are located in the world, and from the safety of your own home, we invite you to take a journey through Ganesh’s installation with our new audio/visual guide 🎧. Listen to select recordings by some of the contemporary artists and activists who are represented in the work such as, Julie Tolentino (@thejulietolentino), Pauline Park, Javid Sayed, and Judy Yu, as well as audio guides created by our Museum educators. AND if you’re in #NYC you can visit the installation #IRL 24/7 with the audio accompaniment.
Head to the link in our profile to start listining today, or access the guide via Leslie-Lohman Museum on the @gesso.app mobile app.
#LeslieLohmanMuseum #ChitraGanesh
[image: Chitra Ganesh, “A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask”, (detail) 2020, site-specific QUEERPOWER facade installation.]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/156031284_145120230724146_8079410188255745662_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=n5GO3sm4ADEAX_ZMtHf&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=4c19cf614206809dda345b8903db2ebe&oe=60679FD0)
![Laura Aguilar's series “Don’t Tell Her Art Can’t Hurt” is a layered commentary on cultural identity, art making, and depression. Produced in the aftermath of the 1992 #LosAngeles Uprising, Aguilar’s imagery echoes the statement on her T-shirt claiming ‘art can’t hurt you.’ However, for Aguilar, efforts to be an artist in a family that neither understood nor supported her art, nor her efforts to reconcile her art with her cultural identity, was a painful struggle—one that often fueled her depression. The text accents her message, while the gun reflects her increasing suicidal thoughts at this time.
“Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell” [On view through May 9] is the first comprehensive retrospective of photographer Laura Aguilar (1959-2018), assembling more than 70 works produced over three decades.
Visit the 🔗 in our profile to reserve your ticket today. The Museum’s new open hours are FRI-SUN, 12-6 pm.
[Image: Laura, Aguilar, “Don’t Tell Her Art Can’t Hurt (Part A)”, 1993. © Laura Aguilar / Courtesy of the Laura Aguilar Trust. Collection of @vpam_arts and @lacma.
——
Image description: A black and white self-portrait of photographer Laura Aguilar wearing a T-shirt that says “Art Can’t Hurt You”. There is a hand writen caption under the photo that read: “The t-shirt said Art can’t hurt you, she knew better. Her problem was she places A value on it. She believed in it just a little too much she wanted to believe that it was hers to have, to hold, and own.”
#LeslieLohmanMuseum #LauraAguilar](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/155819856_118660563528068_2594169476364459094_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=ZbfFuAXA0IwAX_lZmh-&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=0af27cabc940d6a73ef94d70d821f558&oe=6068113D)
![Happy Monday! Mark your calendar 📆 Thursday, March 4, 7 PM (EST), join the Museum and the @onearchives for the latest installment of Remote Intimacies: "Stranger at Home: Xina Xurner (@xinaxurner), Young Joon Kwak (@youngjoonkwak) & Christopher Richmond (@platosbeard).
"Stranger at Home" is a video and performance assemblage that interpolates a performance by Xurner with Joon Kwak and Richmond’s three-channel video installation Slow Dance (2014) "Slow Dance" follows a central figure discomfited by, and awkwardly moving through and interacting with an unfamiliar, heteronormative domestic space. She contends with the confinements of absent intimacy, ideas of “home,” and the slow and subtle doom of everyday gendered ennui and dysphoria.
The three channels, originally shown in a gallery setting, are recontextualized through the Zoom screen format, imbuing the proceedings with additional layers of distance, isolation, anxiety, and disembodiment. "Stranger at Home" culminates in Xina Xurner’s doom metal-inspired sonic swirl of distortion, embodying the exhaustion and yearning for intimacy wrought by a year of distancing, not just from others, but, ultimately, from one’s self and one’s domestic and intimate spaces.
Follow the 🔗 in our profile to RSVP.
BIOS:
Young Joon Kwak is a LA-based multidisciplinary artist who reimagines bodies and the power structures that govern our everyday lives as mutable and permeable sites of agency. youngjoon.com
Christopher Richmond creates videos, photographs, and drawings that interweave the realism of documentary with science fiction and myth. christopherchristopher.com
Xina Xurner is a noise-dance band with Marvin Astorga and Kwak, whose performances combine electronics, mutated vocals, and bad drag to create sadical and sexperimental anthems of transformation, rebirth, and renewal. xinaxurner.com
#RemoteIntimacies is a series of experimental performances created specifically for online viewing and commissioned and co-organized by the ONE Archives at USC Libraries (@onearchives) and the Museum.
[Image: Photo by Christopher Richmond for Xina Xurner.]
#LeslieLohmanMuseum](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/155353152_426254831810272_2284507045163016507_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=HL-6uPJLugUAX8erAPB&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=44dfcc71dd573bb90d240d38d8521618&oe=60660049)
![T-2 hours until LUX! ⏰ Tonight, 7 PM (EST) join Leslie-Lohman Artist Fellow Arantxa Araujo (@arantxaaraujo) and collaborators, for a participatory performance culminating a 28-day journey live-streamed from the Museum through Zoom and YouTube!
Araujo's project LUX launched on FEB 1 with the release of one audiovisual meditation per day for 28 days. The project “invites us to show up and immerse ourselves in an audiovisual oasis of consciousness, and to allow visualization and meditation to expand our awareness and to dissolve any duality between subject/object.” LUX merges meditative practices, scientific research, experiential technologies, and aesthetics. The series is hosted by The Interior Beauty Salon (@interiorbeautysalon) in the Bronx, NY.
The performance will be followed by a live conversation with the artists about their collective experience including Arantxa Araujo (@arantxaaraujo , Gabriel Chakarji (@gchakarji), Mariana Uribe (@marianette), Anna Costa e Silva (@annacostaesilva), Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo (@interiorbeautysalon) with @ocultosvicios and @mnqblom .
RSVP via the 🔗 in our profile!
[Video: Arantxa Araujo, 2021. Courtesy the artist.]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/152128753_132222405475989_273121907631953306_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=1DIN___RjpYAX8sK7al&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=c2058702740d8ba89ebe150be5c0a8d9&oe=60698C34)
![Have you seen Rashaad Newsome’s (@rashaadnewsome) new film, BLACK MAGIC? Now’s your chance, screening culminates on Sunday FEB 28. BLACK MAGIC is the final element in Newsome’s tripartite project of the same name which launched on #WorldAIDSDay (DEC 1) with a multi-channel work and live performance co-commissioned with Times Square Arts (@tsqarts) and a parallel installation of vinyl wallpaper in the Museum’s Living Room Gallery windows.
Organized into three acts, the film explores trans women and their contributions to the Vogue fem lexicon; and how the marginalization of the Black Queer community has led to systemic oppression, violence, and instability. BLACK MAGIC features an original score by Newsome that is an amalgamation of several live performances. The artist uses two Nintendo Wii's to play and manipulate the score, while a gospel choir, Gregorian chants, live electronic music, live instrumentation, a vogue MC, and an opera singer collide, acting as an operating system to create a new visual and sonic reality. BLACK MAGIC is a striking, uplifting celebration of resiliency and strength!
Head to blackmagic.leslielohmanprojects.org TODAY through FEB 28 to watch the film!
#LeslieLohmanMuseum
[Image: (c) Rashaad Newsome, "Black Magic", 2020.]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/154879539_121412129910445_7728656568824561856_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=3Hf1JxHbOMcAX9NOufB&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=8cf613a834825cd10fff05d8552ecbc3&oe=6066589C)
![It is with a heavy heart that Leslie-Lohman Museum has learned the news of the passing of Ari Gold (1974-2021) on February 14, 2021. Gold was an innovative musician, songwriter, and DJ who grew up in the Bronx, NY in an Orthodox Jewish community and began singing professionally as a child. He released his self-titled debut album in 2001, beginning a career that included proudly speaking out and making work about his gay and Jewish identity.
“I met Ari through Jose Munoz, his partner, at one of Jose’s unforgettable parties in the nineties. Whenever Ari was performing we would all follow. Ari was a consummate artist, passionate about his music, proud to express his queer sensibility at a time when this was not the norm. I cannot think of Ari without smiling. We will miss him.” —Ela Troyano (@elatroyano) filmmaker and Director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship
To learn more about Gold’s life and work please visit @rollingstone’s tribute to the late artist via the link in our profile.
RIP Ari Gold. You will be missed 💔
[Image: (c) Matthew Eisman/Getty Images.]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/153733628_345310913357553_5127102244158287243_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=_xseUFuoLk0AX-k8RaS&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=b56c5ba33fba6e58bf3fe72474a054db&oe=6066CF1D)
![Could fully-immersing ourselves into an audiovisual experience expand our consciousness? Sunday, February 28, 7 PM (EST) join Leslie-Lohman Artist Fellow Arantxa Araujo (@arantxaaraujo) and collaborators, for a participatory performance culminating a 28-day journey live-streamed through Zoom and YouTube to find out!
Araujo's project LUX launched on FEB 1 with the release of one audiovisual meditation per day for 28 days. The project “invites us to show up and immerse ourselves in an audiovisual oasis of consciousness, and to allow visualization and meditation to expand our awareness and to dissolve any duality between subject/object.” LUX merges meditative practices, scientific research, experiential technologies, and aesthetics. The series is hosted by The Interior Beauty Salon (@interiorbeautysalon) in the Bronx, NY.
The performance will be followed by a live conversation with the artists about their collective experience including Arantxa Araujo (@arantxaaraujo , Gabriel Chakarji (@gchakarji), Mariana Uribe (@marianette), Anna Costa e Silva (@annacostaesilva), Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo (@interiorbeautysalon) with @ocultosvicios and @mnqblom .
RSVP via the 🔗 in our profile!
[Image: Arantxa Araujo, 2021, (film still). Courtesy the artist.]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/153669600_875365583260153_6003033994799713647_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=kCMuBmTCKVgAX89vaNk&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=abbf6b4fed11f07b3b00c8d1ea4475e8&oe=60697780)
![Catalina Schliebener (@catalina_schliebener) recontextualizes images of childhood, placing seemingly innocent figures in ambiguous configurations that simultaneously affirm and complicate notions of childhood naiveté. These objects intentionally include instructions or narratives on gender conformity and sexuality, taught through books, materials, and toys made for children.
“Monsters, Inc. (Sulley)” (2019), pictured above and featured in our current exhibition DISSOLUTION is part of the artist’s “Satanic Panic” series which recalls news cycles from the 1980s and 1990s that sensationalized gruesome and macabre acts attributed to religiously evil ceremonies and people. Schliebener’s work points to the continued custom of placing blame on various marginalized people for structural problems maintained by those in positions of power and privilege. Visit the Museum FRI through SUN, 12-6 pm to view this work and see the full exhibition which features works of art created by the first two cohorts of the annual Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship 2017-19.
Reserve your tickets via the 🔗 in our profile!
[Image: Catalina Schliebener, “Monsters, Inc. (Sulley)” (2019). Courtesy the artist]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/152333717_930544140816880_2090662321716663355_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=Q_S1BtxVhd8AX_Ze8UJ&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=2352b73968796c94a4d09838c3cc93e6&oe=6068A515)
![On this cold winter day, we’re spending time with a particular self-portrait in our #LeslieLohmanCollection by the late artist Ayakamay. Deeply influenced by her adolescence in a cross-cultural Japanese/American environment Ayakamay incorporated traditional Japanese cultural aesthetics into their work to creates a dialogue with contemporary American urbanity and femininity. Their practice included photography, video, and performance art often using themselves as the subject. Ayakamay’s solo show “GENDERLESS” (2016) at the Leslie-Lohman Project Space explored the complex relationships between gender and self by questioning social significance and cultural coding. The exhibition which included this self-portrait opened with a live performance where the artist invited unpredictability and encounters with strangers into the work, welcoming the audience to participate in the work by cutting strands of their hair.
[Image: Ayakamay “Mimikaki (self-portrait)”, 2015, Archival digital print. Gift of the artist #LeslieLohmanCollection.]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/151353240_3608032632644002_3600057044359416085_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=ctsXeVhbaKYAX9WafD-&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=319efad5dd8c4be50773e3c6072b9a2c&oe=6066E796)
![Happy Birthday to the late poet and activist, Audre Lorde (1934-1992)! A self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Lorde dedicated her life and work to fighting civil and social injustice. Her profound contributions addressed issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness and disability, and the exploration and honoring of Black female identity. Her quote “When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision—then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid," from, “The Transformation of Silence into Language & Action” continues to be an inspiration in the Museum’s work.
This photograph of Lorde speaking in Washington DC was taken by photographer JEB (Joan E. Biren) (@jebmedia) and is part of the #LeslieLohmanCollection.
#AudreLorde
#LeslieLohmanMuseum
[Image: JEB (Joan E. Biren) "Audre Lorde (Reads her words, Wash, DC.)," 1980, silver gelatin print. Gift of the artist. #LeslieLohmanCollection.]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/151999236_857586208356115_4492737727106050704_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=KJoP1uSz148AX-PF9ba&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=78670cfa3c9bdfaa68c3abc19cc31ab6&oe=606658BD)
![Sunday FEB 21, 3:30 PM (EST) following the premiere of BABYLIFT "a no recording, no streaming performance," by artist Anh Vo (@anhqvo) at @targetmargin, the artist will host a post-show conversation about the work with dancer, writer, and curator benedict nguyễn (@xbennyboo). Swipe through for details! RSVP via 🔗 in profile.
Live captions will be provided for this event. Please email david@bax.org for access questions.
This online conversation is supported in collaboration with the Museum and @baxarts.
[Image: © Maria Baranova, 2020]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/152025221_747305082647913_8771787646806875035_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=CLqQoao9lfIAX9kZIFr&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=9af0769231ea441269391cd4e0dcedc2&oe=6066AE54)
![“ONLY AT MIDNIGHT ARE THERE THREE. AM I WAITING 4 YOU OR ARE YOU WAITING 4 ME? MOVE HEART 2 HEART ++ TOUCH/EXIT 2 SUBMIT. IT’LL MEAN SOMETHING 2 SOMEONE IF YOU PRESSED S[E/IN]N(E)D && DID COMMIT.”
New media artist and “code poet” Shawné Michaelain Holloway (@cleogirl2525) released a new work, SOMEBODY'S MIDNIGHT this past #valentinesday as part of her Leslie-Lohman Museum Queer Theatre & Performance Residency fellowship. SOMEBODY'S MIDNIGHT is an interactive open love letter that only exits online between the hours of MIDNIGHT and 1 AM (in your unique timezone) through April 26. Holloway welcomes you to join her in this interactive call and response that reflects on old connections, longing, hope, desire, and more. Like many forms of communications, this one breaks down over time, forcing the user to either act quickly or revisit it in order to complete the transmission.
Follow the link, somebodysmidnight.space at MIDNIGHT TONIGHT (or visit the link in our profile) to begin.
* SOMEBODY'S MIDNIGHT is only accessible on your mobile device.
This project is created with support from Nick Briz (@nbriz) and the netizen.org (@netizenorg) community via crucial co-thinking and co-developing.
[Video: © SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, 2021]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/151454624_290893289036701_1110583746000623009_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=DnhLb4K5cBEAX-25X02&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=cad1d4253f8d8a3b03903983134397f4&oe=60661DAE)
![Often examined through the lens of self-portraiture and hybrid cultural identity, Laura Aguilar’s now iconic triptych “Three Eagles Flying” also operates as a powerful form of political image-text. The ‘three eagles’ within the photograph are implicit—the Spanish word for eagle, águila, denotes the artist’s surname, while the national emblems of the United States and Mexico are also referenced. With head wrapped and body bound, Aguilar establishes her own figure as a forceful political symbol to be contended with.
“Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell” (on view through May 9) is the first comprehensive retrospective of photographer Laura Aguilar (1959-2018), assembling more than 70 works produced over three decades.
Head to the link in our profile to reserve your tickets for the exhibition. The Museum’s new open hours are Fri, Sat, and Sun, 12-6 pm.
[Image: Laura Aguilar, “Three Eagles Flying”, 1990, (across three slides) © Laura Aguilar / Courtesy @whitneymuseum.]
#LuraAguilar #LeslieLohmanMuseum](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/151652112_739232016728272_3434532391830879560_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=FO0e-FZSW-QAX8VoU7p&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=1289f380215d2fa99329da2b08409edc&oe=6066ADCF)
![SOMEBODY'S MIDNIGHT Shawné Michaelain Holloway’s (@cleogirl2525) interactive, open digital love letter is LIVE ⚡️💻💥! Head to somebodysmidnight.space (or visit the link in our profile) to join. Once you enter the site (which is only accessible on your mobile device) hearts ❤️ will pop up that prompt you with questions. You will then be redirected to your email and asked to send an email using those answers. There are no clear instructions so don’t despair if you get lost just revisit often to complete the transmission.
somebodysmidnight.space is accessible from midnight to 1 AM (in your unique timezone) through April 26. See you at midnight!
*This project is created with support from Nick Briz (@nbriz) and the netizen.org (@netizenorg) community via crucial co-thinking and co-developing.
[Images © SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, 2021]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/150997594_1143303366122406_7355046167213919967_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=wGZRI9WP_CIAX8jVFD5&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=dbad968ac8dcf90a020a69dab1b2ddae&oe=6066D593)
![Who are you sending love letters to? SOMEBODY'S MIDNIGHT is an interactive, open love letter by new media artist, poet and Leslie-Lohman Museum Queer Theatre & Performance Residency Fellow SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY (@cleogirl2525). Activated on Valentine’s day, at midnight tonight through April 26, and only accessible between midnight and 1 AM (in each viewers’ unique timezone), the text becomes a call and response, asking viewers to reflect on old connections as we long, desire, wish, and hope from our isolation. In the end, like all communications, this one breaks down quickly, forcing us to either act quickly or revisit it in order to complete the transmission. Once you enter the site (which is only accessible on your mobile device) hearts ❤️ will pop up that prompt you with questions. You will then be redirected to your email and asked to send an email using those answers. Like the often circuitous route of love itself, there is no clear instruction for how to navigate the work so re-visit often and try again to complete the transmission.
SOMEBODY'S MIDNIGHT begins TONIGHT at MIDNIGHT! Visit the link in our profile at midnight TONIGHT (in your unique timezone) to take part in Holloway’s open love letter. #HappyValentinesDay
#LeslieLohmanMuseum
🖤🖤🖤
SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY is a new media artist and poet. Known for using sound, video, and performance, Holloway shapes the rhetorics of technology and sexuality into tools for exposing structures of power. Holloway’s work often critically engages the technical language of instruction, especially the aesthetics and mechanics of practices from queer feminist BDSM communities, to direct viewers to read, play, or listen their way through narratives that guide them in and out of visceral memories, asking them to confront difficult emotions like desire, shame, or regret and to employ them as mechanisms to navigate through and/or away from abuses of power.
*This project is created with support from Nick Briz (@nbriz) and the netizen.org (@netizenorg) community via crucial co-thinking and co-developing.
[Video: © SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, 2021]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/149503718_2916451145340998_3293816344095384496_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=ku4K0iZtGGEAX-vkeNI&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=b274916c784350e092a7a4f2b1d605ce&oe=60690AC4)
![Happy Friday! We’re heading into the weekend with “Lili & Miss Alex” (2020), a photograph by Ruben Natal San Miguel (@rubennatal.sanmiguel). This warm and dynamic portrait which Natal San Miguel took last summer at Coney Island is now part of the #LeslieLohmanCollection! The artist makes what he calls “environmental portraits”, photographing people where they live and in the places they embody. Natal San Miguel sees his photographs as, “a way to have people understand otherness and other beauty; another definition of beauty." (@npr, 2021).
“Lili and Miss Alex” currently hangs in the entrance to the Museum welcoming visitors as they arrive. Stop by the Museum today to see this portrait and our two new exhibitions; “LAURA AGUILAR: Show and Tell”, and “DISSOLUTION”. The Museum's new hours are FRI, SAT, SUN, 12-6 pm. Visit the 🔗 in our profile to reserve your tickets.
[Image: Ruben Natal San Miguel, ‘’Lili & Miss Alex'' (Glamourpussies ) 2020. #LeslieLohmanCollection. Gift of the artist.]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/148950128_717775638931485_5986698806659448118_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=_cghmS2Yh_YAX-XuFGt&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=77972a7c3f20eef93167e4d6e64af88d&oe=60665829)
![#SavetheDate! FEB 19-21 Leslie-Lohman Museum Queer Theatre & Performance Residency Fellow, Anh Vo (@anhqvo) will be premiering BABYLIFT: a no recording, no streaming performance. “The act of performing will be its own performance”, remarks the artist.
BABYLIFT is a fragmented and collaged multimedia solo work, written and performed by Vo. The performance combines the terror and pleasure of erotic hauntings and attempts to queer a linear of masculinist history. Named after a 1975 mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to Western countries, which resulted in a plane crash that killed 78 of those children, BABYLIFT is first a memorial to the unmourned and unremembered.
Sunday FEB 21, 3:30 PM (EST), join Anh Vo for a post-show conversation with benedict nguyễn (@xbennyboo) co-hosted by the Museum and @baxarts. RSVP via 🔗 in profile.
[Image: © Maria Baranova, 2020. ]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/149034460_925677337970820_7325467187647982172_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=ftkFuCgpfqgAX8dzygA&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=a68f66335f78467589712322f7fa593d&oe=60666F5E)
![Queer artists have always existed at the forefront of politically engaged artmaking. DISSOLUTION (FEB 6- MAY 25), the two-part exhibition featuring works of art created by the first two cohorts of the annual Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship (2017-18 and 2018-19) continues that legacy. These works consider the role of queerness at the intersection of wider social relations, including class and inequality, race, and ecological crisis. Dissolution refers to artistic strategies of negation and undoing, in which representations of hierarchical and normative structures are fragmented, dissolved, or upended, in an act of resistance to the structures of oppression they uphold. Works in the exhibition subvert and reimagine signifiers of masculinity, imagine new forms of childhood, or resist linear narratives of progress. Through this embrace of negation, artists illustrate alternate possibilities and propose radically new ways of being.
Part one of DISSOLUTION (on view through March 13) includes works by Buzz Slutzky (@buzzslutzky), CatalinaSchliebener (@catalina_schliebener), Eric Rhein (@ericrheinart), Gwen Shockey (@gwenshockey), Kiyan Williams (@kiyanwilliams), Kristine Eudey (@kristineeudey), Max Colby (@max_colby), Michael Childress (@tobe3d), Rodrigo Moreira (@rodrigo_._moreira), Vanessa Rondon (@chachispice).
[Image: Kristine Eudey, “wet cold hot dry”, 2019, granite and iron. Courtesy the artist.]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/147475294_786905445508100_6380553417723838044_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=9rdRmC0YKioAX85b5tV&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=b27fbec8d2841b8b70584f79daa35633&oe=6069547A)
![“An embrace of the essential idea of transness changes everything because it means there’s no longer an expectation based on the body you were born into, or how your life should play out and how it should end. Traditional family models and structures of control disappear.”
—SOPHIE, @paper, 2018
We’re thinking about SOPHIE Xeon (1986-2021) today. The brilliant Scottish musician, electronic music producer, singer, songwriter, DJ, and trans visionary whose untimely death came as a shock to the LGBTQ+ community one week ago today.
SOPHIE was a true leader of a new sound and an icon of visibility and trans liberation. In their limitless creativity and open curiosity, they truly embodied queerness. In addition to the musical gifts they shared with the world, they lived and imagined the possibility of unrestricted self-determination for future generations.
Our thoughts are with SOPHIE's friends, family. #GodisTrans
[Photo: (c) SOPHIE, “It’s Okay to Cry” video., 2018]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/146450105_3610351685730607_2679075463858828845_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=Y7MkTXt9F2sAX-QDKCv&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=411ccbc5e561ae9125d54173c22be812&oe=60685FBA)
![[First slide]
An apology to Kiyan Williams (@kiyanwilliams)
Last night, I misgendered multidisciplinary artist Kiyan Williams in a special public program organized @leslielohmanmuseum. I am personally accountable for this and personally recommit to efforts to undo toxic heteronormativity. This transgression is unacceptable, as Kiyan trusted that they were entering a space that embodies care and support for transfemme people. And over many weeks, a great effort was made on their part and that of others to make the program meaningful. I am profoundly sorry for my actions and the hurt I have caused.
Laura Raicovich (@lauraraicovich)
——-
[Second slide]
We are committed to making the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art a safe space for transfemme people and people of all gender identities, race, and ethnicity, and we failed you, Kiyan. Laura used the incorrect pronouns, but we recognize that this was not only a personal failing, but a collective one as an institution and an example of systemic devaluing of trans and nonbinary people. We acknowledge that a post does not make up for the harm done or the critical issues of transphobia within the museum and society at large.
——-
[Third slide]
Leslie-Lohman Museum is committed to developing robust projects, programs, acquisitions, and partnerships that center and support the work, ideas, and existence of Black transfemme artists, and we will share our progress with you. Further, as a museum, we are engaged in an iterative process of self-reflection of our own historically exclusionary practices. While we recognize that institutions are often directly responsible for reinforcing the status quo, we have the power to transform our own work and we recommit ourselves to undoing bias of all kinds.](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/146769956_412493909849645_4717776275774431172_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=k5MWJEA1E1EAX9THUHh&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=6ce72e707801d54611747f64b99e668a&oe=606897BB)
![It is with a heavy heart that we learned the news of the passing LGBTQ+ and social justice activist Carmen Vàzquez (1949-2021). Vàzquez died on January 27th from COVID related complications. This detail is from a portrait of Vàzquez by artist Jo Ann Block which is part of the #LeslieLohmanCollection. Unfortunately, the full and fierce portrait can not be shared due to @instagram’s censorship of nude female-bodied people.
“Change is never about one person alone, there are countless others who paved the way for my activism, and countless others who will follow me and build a bridge to the future…..” said Vàzquez in her speech at the 2020 Creating Change Conference. You can listen to their full speech by following the link in our profile.
Vàzquez was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in Harlem, NY. Among her many accomplishments, Vàzquez was the Founding Director of the Women’s Building in #SanFrancisco, and helped found the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center in San Francisco and the LGBT Health & Human Services Network. She was a founder and principal author of Causes in Common (a national coalition of Reproductive Justice and LGBT Liberation activists). Her essays have been published in several anthologies, and she made scores of keynote presentations at conferences and college campuses across the United States. Vazquez was the Co-Chair of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation Board of Directors and the former Director of LGBT Health and Human Services.
[Image: Jo Ann Block (@joannblock), 2011, “Carmen Vàzquez” (detail), mixed-media collage, Gift of the artist. #LeslielohmanCollection]](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/145985755_457089295659198_5346971131463366190_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=3&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=y0MKSiVI4tAAX8SMAKq&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com&oh=7b240a68deec117b2abe5d4ebe0d6561&oe=6069363F)