Leslie Lohman | Leslie Lohman Museum

WE STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE CALLING FOR RACIAL JUSTICE AND AN END TO ALL FORMS OF OPPRESSION. READ OUR STATEMENT

DONATE

|

SHOP

Blood Bag 300dpi

Blood Bag 300dpi

ON VIEW

CAN YOU SAVE SUPERMAN?

JUN 10 - DEC 1, 2020

more

Loftslider 683x515

Loftslider 683x515

HAPPENING

The Loft

LIVE EVENT JUNE 28, 4-6 PM (OPEN JUNE 26- AUG, 2020)

enter

Learn Home Slider Desktop

Learn Home Slider

ON VIEW

OTHER POINTS OF VIEW

JAN 22 - SEP 27, 2020

more

Effect photoshot

Effect photoshot

ON VIEW

UNCANNY EFFECTS

JAN 22 - APR 19, 2020

more

ON VIEW

WORKING DEFINITIONS

FEB 27 - MAY 17, 2020

more

ON VIEW

BEING SEEN MAKES A MOVEMENT POSSIBLE

JUNE 2019 - MAY, 2020

more

Special Features

Larry Kramer

more

Archive Cover Image

THE ARCHIVE: Intersectionality, issue 68

more

Leslielohman photos

UPCOMING

LAURA AGUILAR: Show and Tell

Feb 06, 2021 - May 09, 2021

more

Profiles

INTERSECTIONALITY IN THE STUDIO

more

Shop

LLM Books 7

$39.95

QUEER HOLDINGS

shop our store

Calendar

SPECIAL EVENTS

THE LOFT (LIVE 4-6 PM EDT)

Jun 28, 2020

SPECIAL EVENTS

FALL GALA

Oct 20, 2020

@LeslieLohmanMuseum

We are excited to share that the Guggenheim (@guggenheim) has invited us to take over their Instagram account for the day. With their generosity and reach we saw this an opportunity to foreground three phenomenal organizations that support the work and well-being of Queer BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Please follow along at @guggenheim to learn about the Black AIDS Institute (@blackaids) a Black-led think/do tank that also fights for Black lives, the artwork of the youth artists clients at the Ali Forney Center (@aliforneycenter) and Black Trans Travel Fund (@blacktranstravelfund ) a mutual aid organization that supports Black trans women. We encourage you to learn about and support their work. Visit Aliforneycenter.org, Blackaids.org and Blacktranstravelfund.com for more information. #LeslieLohmanxGuggTakeover #LeslieLohmanMuseum

[pictured: (1) Black AIDS Institute, courtesy Black AIDS Institute; (2) Evan Woodward (@thatsjustevan), "Self Portrait in Harlem", courtesy the artist and Ali Forney Center; (3) Black Trans Travel Fund, courtesy Devin Lowe.]

Performance Alert🚨Tonight at 11pm! As part of an upcoming summer performance series, artist Joseph Liatela (@josephliatela) will be creating a new performance video work contemplating the future of the social and politically meaningful space of the #Queer bar. Tune in at 11PM (EDT) on our IG Live for some behind the scenes live streaming and a sneak peek of the shoot taking place in the the oldest gay bar in NYC-- Julius Bar (@juliusbarnyc)! 🏳️‍🌈Starring dancer DaJuan (@iam.dajuan) and dancer & visual artist John Macejka (@john.psd).

[Images: (1) Joseph Liatela, “Bound” performance, 2017. Courtesy the artist.; (2) (c) DaJuan, courtesy the artist.; (3) (c) John Macejka, courtesy the artist.; (4) Courtesy Julius Bar.]

IT’S TOMORROW 😍 Sunday, June 28th we’ll be celebrating our Queer communities and the powerful movement for Black liberation at #theLoft - a space to virtually gather together. 👉leslielohmanloft.org

The Loft features six unique rooms and spaces, each of which house poetry readings, live performances, workshops, video screenings, and live DJ sets to evoke the feeling of holding space together. A special highlight of The Loft's ongoing programming includes a series of workshops, starting with a conversation on #Pride Sunday between Kenneth Bailey, of the Design Studio for Social Intervention (@ds4si), and artist Tiago Gualberto (@tiagogualberto). They will hold an engaged talk on the history of the historic #NYC Loft — the first site of David Mancuso's historic dance party Love Saves the Day — and how the micro-utopias of House music have been a force toward Black and Brown liberation, both in New York and Brazil. #theLoft is a free inclusive program with continuous content throughout the evening which will also be accessible at leslielohmanloft.org through the summer. .
.
See full list of participating artists via our comments. #LeslieLohmanMuseum.
. 📸 Buzz Slutzky, Loft drawings from archival photographs. Courtesy the artist and Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.

Open this Sunday, June 28th! #theLoft is a #Pride micro-website that we created to virtually gather and celebrate Queer communities in the absence of a physical location. The Loft features six unique rooms and spaces, each of which house poetry readings, live performances, events, video screenings, and a dance party to evoke the feeling of holding space together. A special highlight of the program includes a reading organized by The Poetry Project (@poetry_project) called “Capillary Action”. Crossing place and generations, the reading celebrates the work of Black and Indigenous poets who draw force upward from the roots and into new structures of radical presence. Poets include Chrystos, jayy dodd, Joselia Hughes, Roya Marsh, and Jake Skeets. Please join us for the reading in the ‘Loft Room’. #theLoft is a free inclusive program with continuous content throughout the evening which will also be accessible at leslielohmanloft.org through the summer. #LeslieLohmanMuseum.

Image: Buzz Slutzky, Loft Drawing from a Photo from “Inside Today’s Home”. Courtesy the artist and Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.

Happy Monday. Please remember to vote today!
Below is a list of 9 community care organizations to support who are fighting for the liberation of Black, queer, trans people. This is a small compilation and there are many more resource lists available. Supporting community-driven and mutual-aids organizations is a way to help redistribute resources among marginalized communities and to dismantle wealth discrimination and systemic racism. #AllBlackLivesMatter #LeslieLohmanMuseum

#Juneteenth celebrates African-American freedom from slavery. It commemorates the (intentionally) late reading of federal orders by General Gordon Granger in the city of Galveston, Texas, on 19 June 1865, proclaiming that enslaved people in Texas were free— slavery had ended 2.5 year earlier in the former Confederate states, including Texas. This Juneteenth we are reflecting on William Dorsey Swann, one of the first self-identifying drag queens, as well as many other courageous formerly enslaved people who were also some of the first gay liberation activists.
.
. “It was April 12, 1888 when the police burst through the door of the two-story residence in northwest Washington, D.C., just half a mile from the White House, they discovered dozens of black men dancing together there, wearing silk and satin dresses [...]. Most of them were former slaves or the children of slaves”, writes Channing Gerard Joseph. Joseph uncovered Swann’s story when he found an article in “The Washington Post” (April 13, 1888) titled “Negro Dive Raided. Thirteen Black Men Dressed as Women Surprised at Supper and Arrested.” The story details an incident where Swann was arrested during a brawl with police. “The fight was also one of the first known instances of violent resistance in the name of LGBTQ rights,” says Joseph. Swann was born into slavery in 1858 in Maryland. Freed from slavery in 1862, he went on to establish a culture of drag balls Washington, not unlike those still thriving today. .
.
Juneteenth celebrates freedom in defiance of systemic racism, police brutality, funding for the prison industrial complex, historic redlining, and numerous other forms of oppression. .
.
[Images: (L) William Dorsey Swann. James Gardiner Collection-creative commons license. (R ) The Washington Post” (April 13, 1888) “Negro Dive Raided. Thirteen Black Men Dressed as Women Surprised at Supper and Arrested.” The National Republican via The Library of Congress]

Part of Queer life is the the intermittent, hard-won celebration of civil rights that should never have been up for debate in the first place. Today, in a 6-3 vote, #SCOTUS ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in the workplace. Two court cases concerning gay rights were considered, filed by Gerald Bostock (fired from a government program after joining a gay softball league) and Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who was let go after he came out to a female client. The third case concerns Aimee Stephens, a funeral director who asserted her right to determine her own gender presentation at work, writing to her employer, “On August 26, 2013, I will return to work as my true self, Aimee Australia Stephens, in appropriate business attire.” .
.
Stephens, who passed one month ago of kidney failure, was moved by the supportive demonstrations on her trip to Washing for the SCOTUS hearing in October. “The more I’ve seen the support, it gives me the strength to get up another day, to go on fighting another day and give that same hope to all the rest.” Her words resonate as we think about the lived struggles of generations of BIPOC LGBTQ+ people, whose intersectional advocacy built the foundation for fairness in the workplace, and how many more civil rights (in housing, education, health care, and other realms of life) remain to be fought and won. .
.
.
[Image: Diana Davies,“Lesbians for equal employment rights!” Gay liberation March on Albany, New York, March 14, 1971. Courtesy of @nypl] (Thank you to @lgbt_history for the initial sourcing.)

Through the accumulated histories of Queer image-making, some works remain truly radical: among them, images that center the care and love of Black family. In JEB’s (Joan E. Biren)(@jebmedia )1979 photograph, "Darquita and Denyeta," Denyeta holds a spoonful of food in her hand, while she and her young daughter Darquita momentarily lean toward one another for a kiss. Both are shirtless—arguably the best way to feed a toddler—and sitting casually on the floor, in a moment both utterly ordinary and arrestingly deep in its intimacy. .

When JEB made this photograph, a decade of gay and lesbian parenting advocacy work had already been underway; however, societal and legal structures were still hostile to lesbian motherhood. Yet, the image expresses only love, trust, and safety.
JEB’s determination to make images “visible to others, not for the sake of art or money, but to encourage action for change” motivated her to include it in her self-published book, “Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians” (1979). Of those images, Audre Lorde stated: "As we need to share our words for power, so also do we need to share the contours of our faces, and the visual shapes of our loving and of our lives. The splendid vitality captured within Eye to Eye makes this possible.” #BlackLivesMatter .
.
.
[Image: JEB (Joan E. Biren), "Darquita and Denyeta," 1979. (c) 2020 JEB (Joan E. Biren) @jebmedia

Happy #Pride month! While we may not be able to gather together in physical space for Pride, we are honoring the dynamism of our multi-faceted #queer communities with a roster of radical programming that you can safely enjoy from home.

The lineup includes: “Queer Care: a generative creative writing workshop” lead by writer and author Nancy Agabian that will focus on issues of care- physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual– and what they mean for our communities today; “Can You Save Superman?,” a new digital project by artist Jordan Eagles (@jordaneagles) centered on gay health and blood equality; “Remote Intimacies,” a series of commissioned performances happening on Zoom and Instagram Live; studio broadcasts from our #LeslieLohmanMuseum Artist Fellows; and "Queer Art TV" a series of educational videos and resources developed by our educators. All of this will culminate in #TheLockdownLoft, a free, inclusive, virtual party that will take place on Pride Sunday, June 28, from 1-4pm featuring poetry readings, performances, screenings, and a dance party with DJs housed on a micro-website visually evoking the Museum’s home in #Soho and an earlier time in the neighborhood's history.

Our 2020 Pride programming is dedicated to the legacy of groundbreaking author, playwright and #AIDS activist #LarryKramer. "Kramer's work and activism, and that of so many queer activists, has had a longstanding and immeasurable impact on LGBTQ+ art, particularly for artists that are part of the Museum's community,” says @lauraraicovich, the Museum’s Interim Director. .
.
[Image: Buzz Slutzky (@buzzslutzky), “Drawing of the Leslie-Lohman Museum’s
Lockdown Loft,” 2020]

“I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” -Audre Lorde

#LeslieLohmanMuseum is here, we are witnessing, we are angry and we will forever be an anti-racist voice in our community. We stand with #BlackLivesMatter. It is only when we join together, ALL of us OTHERS, that we can topple the oppressive systems that have fought so hard to keep us down... #GeorgeFloyd #BreonnaTaylor #AhmaudArbery #thisisnotokay #saytheirnames #icantbreath.
.
. “Your silence will not protect you.” If you are able to please support these organizations: Black Visions Collective @blackvisionscollective, Brooklyn Community Bail Fund @brooklynbailfund, Black Mama’s Bail Fund @nationalbailout, Women For Political Change @mnwfpc, Minnesota Freedom Fund @mnfreedomfund, and Black AIDS Institute @blackaids .
.
[Image: JEB (Joan E. Biren) (@jebmedia) "Audre Lorde (Reads her words, Wash, DC.)," 1980, silver gelatin print, 19 x 13.8 in. Gift of the artist. Courtesy of the Leslie-Lohman Museum. ]

For the final post in our series highlighting #RobertGiard’s analogue networks, we’re focusing on Giard’s journals held at the @nypl and at @beineckelibrary. His journals at @nypl were restricted for 20 years at Giard’s request, and only became available to researchers in 2019. Our exhibition “Uncanny Effects: Robert Giard’s Currents of Connection” includes 18 of his journal entries. “Uncanny Effects'' curators, Ariel Goldberg and Noam Parness, describe the journals as being “at the heart of understanding the nuances of Giard’s practice.” From 1985 (when he began his “Particular Voices“ series) until his death in 2002, Giard journaled for each photo shoot, using this practice to meditate on his sitters’ (and his own) mood and experiences.

Pictured and transcribed here is Giard’s journal entry for his 1988 photoshoot with #MelvinDixon at his home in #NewYorkCity. Melvin Dixon (1950-1992) was a leading scholar, fiction writer, poet, and translator traversing literary disciplines from the late 1970s until the time of his death. From landmark publications such as “Ride out the wilderness: geography and identity in Afro-American literature” (1987) to his unpublished diaries, Dixon documented Black gay life throughout his career and linked Black gay writers of previous generations to the future. Dixon spoke to this need for vital legacies of Black gay authors at the 1992 Out/Write Conference, which Giard attended, asking the audience to “remember us” as the “development of gay literary history” takes shape, which is inextricable from the ongoing devastation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Darius Bost’s recent book “Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence” (2019), charts how Dixon explored “[the] relationship between geography, memory, and identity.” Dixon died of #AIDS-related illness in 1992. His papers are held at the @schomburgcenter. [*Note that this journal transcription was generated by curator Noam Parness.] .
.
Swipe to see Giard’s portrait of Melvin Dixon, Giard’s journal entry for his photoshoot with Dixon, and to read the transcription of the entry. @robertgiardfoundation #LeslieLohmanMuseum [image credits via comment]

#DidYouKnow that if you read one of the books in our #LeslieLohmanMuseum library every day, it would take you over 8 years to get through the entire collection? 📚 We're giving you a kickstart with our Reads Instagram Story highlight reel, which chronicles selections from our collection, ranging from the "Queer Encyclopedia of Visual Art" to #HarmonyHammond's "Lesbian Art in America" and "Out West" and #BarbaraHammer’s “Evidentiary Bodies.” We'll also be sharing new reads every week via our Stories! And the best part? Many of these works are also accessible online! #LeslieLohmanMuseum
Image: cover of Harmony Hammond's "Lesbian Art in America," 2000.

We are heartbroken to hear of the passing of author, playwright and #AIDS activist #LarryKramer this morning. Kramer was a monumental figure in the fight against #HIV and #AIDS, and was one of the first people to foresee that this "cancer among gay men" would spread worldwide and kill millions. His style was often aggressive, in perfect synchronicity with the urgency of the moment. According to the @nytimes, "the noted writer whose raucous, antagonistic campaign for an all-out response to the AIDS crisis helped shift national health policy in the 1980s and ’90s." Kramer founded Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), a collective whose street actions demanded expedited research into AIDS drugs and an end to discrimination against #queer communities, and was called "one of America's most valuable troublemakers" by #SusanSontag.

His celebrated writing expounded #LGBTQ themes. "The Normal Heart," Kramer's passionate account of the early years of #AIDS, moved audiences across the country and received both Tony and Emmy Awards. At the time of his passing, Kramer was working on a play centered around #COVID-19. .
[image: Robert Giard, “Larry Kramer with Molly,” 1989. Copyright Estate of @robertgiardfoundation ]

#FireIsland holds a unique place in the hearts and historic imaginings of many in the #queer community. According to legend, gay folx began to congregate on the #LongIsland barrier island in the late 1930s, when writers #WHAuden and #ChristopherIsherwood held a raucous party in which they dressed as Dionysus and Ganymede. The development of the Fire Island Pines neighborhood and a variety of gay bars and clubs 1960s, led to an influx of LGBTQ+ people on the island. By the 1970s, popular literature was referencing Fire Island's reputation as a queer getaway location. Image: Tom Bianchi, "Fire Island Pines polaroids, 1975-1983." #MemorialDay #LeslieLohmanMuseum

We dream of a more just, equitable future for all, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, gender or sexual orientation. We’re wrapping up #MuseumWeek with Zanele Maholi’s powerful #photograph “Sebenzile, Parktown” (2016), a part of the visual activist’s information station installation at @performanyc’s Biennial 17 in 2017. The installation allowed visitors to learn about #LGBTQ+ rights in #SouthAfrica and Muholi’s long-term activism through works depicting the lives of black lesbian, gay, transgender and intersex folx. These portraits assert the presence of South Africa’s historically marginalized and discriminated against queer communities. #DreamsMW #LeslieLohmanMuseum
Image: Zanele Muholi, Sebenzile, Parktown, 2016 Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York. © Zanele Muholi.

Continuing our series on Robert Giard’s analogue networks, today we’re highlighting recently published books by writers that Giard photographed as part of his “Particular Voices” series, which documented LGBTQ writers from 1985 until his death in 2002.

Colin Robinson is a poet and activist who lives in Trinidad and Tobago, serving as director of the organization CAISO: sex and gender justice. His recent collection of poems, “You Have You Father Hard Head” (2016), published by Peepal Tree Press, features work spanning three decades. Giard photographed Robinson twice; as a member of Other Countries Collective in 1987, and individually in 1988. Robinson was a cofounder with Isaac Jackson of the Blackheart Collective (1980). His writing had previously appeared in Marlon Riggs’s film, ‘Anthem’ (1991), and in ‘Coming Up Hot: Eight New Poets from the Caribbean’ (2015). In his journal for this portrait, Giard writes of visiting Robinson’s Fort Greene (Brooklyn) apartment, which was “chock full of books”, where they also spoke about authors such as #JoanNestle and #LangstonHughes.

Samuel Ace is a trans and genderqueer poet and sound artist who was photographed by Robert Giard in 1993 in Austerlitz, New York as part of his “Particular Voices” series. Ace’s re-issued publication, “Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t Wash.” was published by @belladonnaseries in 2019, and compiles his first two collections of poetry from the mid-90’s, “Normal Sex” (1994) and “Home in three days. Don’t Wash” (1996). Firebrand Books, an independent publisher for feminist and lesbian fiction and non-fiction, published the first edition of “Normal Sex,” the back cover of which features Giard’s author portrait of Ace. Ace’s fourth book of poetry, “Our Weather Our Sea,” was also published in 2019 by Black Radish Books. @robertgiardfoundation @belladonnaseries #leslielohmanmuseum .

Head to our Instagram Stories to learn more about Robinson and Ace and their publications!
.
. [Image credits:
1. Robert Giard, Colin Robinson, 1988. Silver gelatin print, 15 x 14 in.
2. Robert Giard, Linda Smukler (Samuel Ace), 1994. Silver gelatin print, 10 x 8 in. © the Estate of Robert Giard.]