Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art

12/31/2020

Happy New Year from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. We would like to close this brutal year by recognizing the continued hardships that our communities have experienced, especially our Black, trans-femme, and gender non-conforming communities. The twin pandemics of 2020 have magnified long-seated racial and economic inequalities that will continue to have a significant impact on those most vulnerable and marginalized for years to come. Through it all, we are so grateful for your unwavering support. Your generosity came in numerous forms; notes of encouragement and appreciation, participation in our virtual programs, fiscal support and partnerships, holding us accountable in the work we do, and, most significantly, continuing to believe in the necessity of a multifaceted queer perspective in art. The virtual gathering spaces we have made since March would not have been possible without the hard work of our dedicated staff and the support of our community.

Your generosity and your participation have kept us motivated. We cannot wait to welcome you back into the Museum’s physical space on February 6, 2021, with the opening of our new exhibitions, “Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell”, the first comprehensive retrospective of photographer Laura Aguilar, and “Dissolution”, which features works of art created by the first two cohorts of the annual Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship. Until then we hope you enjoy this festive image by Thomas McGovern to welcome in 2021. Wishing you a happy and healthy, safe, and brighter New Year!

#LeslieLohmanMusuem

12/30/2020

“It was crucial for me to develop a queer utopia imaginary that was capacious enough to hold the complexity of [our] experiences—as New Yorkers and as citizens of the world— the breadth of joy and suffering at once, to recognize that the ground we stand on is built in equal parts of abundance and violence, of celebration and dissent,” says artist Chitra Ganesh (@chitraganeshbkny) reflecting on her new #QUEERPOWER commission, “A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask”. The site-specific work (on view through October 2021), is composed of 10 window panels that wrap the exterior facade of the Museum with imagery of queer knowledge, protest, survival, and joy. The installation incorporates both historical and speculative imagery to illuminate the queer and transgender histories of downtown #NYC as well as sites drawn from the architecture of Seneca Village, 17th-century Lenape settlements, and structures that have since been violently erased. The installation continues the artist’s commitment to honor femininity and social formations that are overlooked or excluded from mainstream discourses of queerness and race, and queer Asian & South Asian communities.

Ganesh’s installation is one of the few exhibitions we have been able to share this year that can be viewed and experienced safely in physical public space. Please visit the exterior of the Museum anytime day or night, the exhibition is illuminated 24/7, to enjoy Ganesh’s powerful work. AND while you’re here don’t miss Rashaad Newsome’s (@rashaadnewsome) BLACK MAGIC vinyl in the adjacent windows of our Living Room Gallery.

#LeslieLohmanMuseum

[Image: Chitra Ganesh, "A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask", 2020, site-specific #QUEERPOWER public art installation. Courtesy Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Photo: (c) Kristine Eudey.]

12/30/2020

“It was crucial for me to develop a queer utopia imaginary that was capacious enough to hold the complexity of [our] experiences—as New Yorkers and as citizens of the world— the breadth of joy and suffering at once, to recognize that the ground we stand on is built in equal parts of abundance and violence, of celebration and dissent,” says artist Chitra Ganesh (@chitraganeshbkny) reflecting on her new #QUEERPOWER commission, “A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask”. The site-specific work (on view through October 2021), is composed of 10 window panels that wrap the exterior facade of the Museum with imagery of queer knowledge, protest, survival, and joy. The installation incorporates both historical and speculative imagery, to illuminate the queer and transgender histories of downtown #NYC as well as sites drawn from the architecture of Seneca Village, 17th-century Lenape settlements, and structures that have since been violently erased. The installation continues the artist’s commitment to honor femininity and social formations that are overlooked or excluded from mainstream discourses of queerness and race, and queer Asian & South Asian communities.

Ganesh’s installation is one of the few exhibitions we have been able to share this year that can be viewed and experienced safely in physical, public space. Please visit the exterior of the Museum anytime day or night, the exhibition is illuminated 24/7, to enjoy Ganesh’s powerful work. AND while you’re here don’t miss Rashaad Newsome’s (@rashaadnewsome)
BLACK MAGIC vinyl in the adjacent windows of our Living Room Gallery.

Image: Chitra Ganesh, “A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask” (detail), 2020. Courtesy the artist. #LeslieLohmanMuseum

12/28/2020

Happy Monday! We’re spending the last week of 2020 reflecting on works in our collection like Lola Corona’s (@visionsbylola), “Queer Martyred by a Gay Culture: A Self-Portrait as Saint Sebastian” (2008). Corona is a transgender Mexican-American artist subversively redefining gender through performance art, fiber crafts, and beauty aesthetics. In “Queer Martyred by a Gay Culture: A Self-Portrait as Saint Sebastian”, constructed of denim, cotton thread, needles, and lace, Corona evokes a lineage of queer artists reenvisioning themselves as historic figures or in culturally resonate myths to explore and reclaim their own narratives. In this work, Corona, who depicts herself as the persecuted Saint Sebastian, alluding to the ways that dominant gay culture, like the dominant Roman culture of Sebastian’s time, might prejudice alternate manifestations of queerness. Saint Sebastian was a Christian saint believed to have been martyred during the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Diocletian. The work which is now part of the #LeslieLohmanMuseum collection was included in the Museum’s 2014 exhibition, “Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community” (@queerthreads), curated by John Chaich (@chaichcreative). The exhibition included over 30 works by international artists exploring alternative media and issues of gender and sexuality. As Chaich notes in the exhibition text, “The arrows that puncture the saint are replaced with embroidery needles, implying that even the tools that weave and strengthen can be used to pierce and tear us apart.” This sentiment reminds us that the power and nuance in all tools is that they hold the possibility for both.

12/23/2020

Have you seen the new work in our windows by artist Rashaad Newsome (@rashaadnewsome)? BLACK MAGIC is Newsome’s tripartite project, which launched on #WorldAIDSDay 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. The work draws from traditions of performance and improvisation born out of Black liberation movements. The pattern, the "King of Arms Tincture," on view through February 1, 2021, is conceptualized by the artist as "a kind of armor creating a more liberatory space for the Queer Black bodies performing within the installation," with a design that references the parades and balls drawn from Newsome’s experiences growing up in New Orleans, as well as the design of domestic lounges and gathering spaces for relaxation and joy. The project continues in 2021 with the debut of a new film by the artist on leslielohman.org and a virtual event presented in partnership with Eyebeam (@eyebeamnyc). Stay tuned for more information!

Head to Wooster St. between Gand St. and Canal St. to enjoy Newsome’s wallpaper as well as artist Chitra Ganesh’s (chitraganeshbkny) street facing installation “A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask”. Both works illuminate the exterior windows of the Museum day and night.

#LeslieLohmanMunsem

[Image: Rashaad Newsome, "Black Magic", 2020. Photo: © Kristine Eudey]

12/21/2020

Happy Monday! We heading into the week with an exciting exhibition alert! On January 16, 2021, the Museum reopens, #IRL with part one of the two part exhibition, “Dissolution”! The exhibition features works created by the first two cohorts of the annual Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship (2017-18 and 2018-19). The Fellows exhibited come from disparate backgrounds and engage in equally divergent art practices, and their artwork presents a multitude of positions within contemporary queer identity. 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.

Part 1 (Jan 16 -Mar 13, 2021) includes artists Buzz Slutzky, Catalina Schliebener, Eric Rhein, Gwen Shockey, Kiyan Williams, Kristine Eudey, Max Colby, Michael Childress, Rodrigo Moreira, Vanessa Rondon.

Part 2 (April 11-May 25, 2021), includes artists Boris Torres, Caitlin Rose Sweet, Carrie Hawks, Christopher Nuñez, Desiree Almoradie, Eduardo Shlomo Velazquez, Frederick Weston, Jason Villegas, Lola Flash, Nash Glynn, Sal Muñoz, Seyi Odebanjo.

#LeslieLohmanMuseum #LeslieLohmanArtistFellowship

[Image: Catalina Schliebener (@catalina_schliebener), "Satanic Panic series, Monster Inc.(Sulley)", 2019, Porcelain figurine, articulated plastic figures, paper, light box, Variable sizes. Courtesy the artist.]

12/18/2020

Through the simplest of lines and shapes, Bartlett gives us a quietly vibrating landscape, evoking the starkness and hush of winter. Bartlett's titular house is nestled among grids: a row of thicket-like black lines, vertical, horizontal, and diagonal--and a square field below. Each line brims with individuality--some are straight, some gently waver, some meet and then diverge again.

The house itself--a box and a triangle--is a rudimentary icon, a motif that has appeared in Bartlett's work since the late 1970s. Subjecting it to endless analysis, repetition, and refiguring, Bartlett (like many others working in the context of second-wave feminism) deconstructs any fixed notions of domesticity and the meaning of "home." Even the painting's ground and support--yet another grid, made of steel plates--was inspired by road and subway signs, pointing to this symbol's endless deferment and lack of fixity.
For many, queerness comes with a complicated relationship to the idea of home, especially at this time of year. This piece came into LLM's holdings through the collection of the late artist Tony Feher (1956-2016) whose predilection for repetition and what Wayne Kostenbaum called "kinky rigor" found an affinity with Bartlett's compositions--and perhaps, with her subtle troubling of "home."

#LeslieLohmanMuseum

[Image: Jennifer Bartlett, "House (Christmas)", 2002, Heated enamel on steel plate. Gift of the Estate of Tony Feher.]

12/17/2020

Exhibition Alert! We are thrilled to reopen the Museum's doors on February 6, 2021 with "Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell". The exhibition is the first comprehensive retrospective of photographer Laura Aguilar (1959-2018), assembling over 70 works produced over three decades. Through photographs and videos that are frequently political as well as personal, and which traverse performative, feminist, and queer art genres, Aguilar offers candid portrayals of herself, her friends and family, and LGBT and Latinx communities. Aguilar’s now iconic triptych, “Three Eagles Flying” (1990), set the stage for her future work by using her nude body as an overt and courageous rebellion against the colonization of Latinx identities — racial, gendered, cultural, and sexual. Her practice intuitively evolved over time as she struggled to negotiate and navigate her ethnicity and sexuality, her challenges with depression and auditory dyslexia, and the acceptance of her large body. This exhibition tells the story of the artist who for most of her life struggled to communicate with words, yet ironically emerged as a powerful voice for numerous and diverse marginalized groups.

"Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell" is organized by the Vincent Price Art Museum in collaboration with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and is guest curated by Sybil Venegas, Independent Art Historian and Curator and Professor Emerita of Chicana/o Studies at East Los Angeles College

[Image: Laura Aguilar, "Grounded #111", 2006. Inkjet print, 14.5 x 15 in. Gift of the Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016, jointly acquired by the Vincent Price Art Museum Foundation and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.]

12/15/2020

Leslie-Lohman Museum Announces New Director

We are thrilled to announce that Alyssa Nitchun who has worked for several years at the intersection of art, culture, and social justice, has been named Executive Director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art 🎉 ! Nitchun most recently served as Acting Executive Director at Creative Time, where she helped realize an ambitious program of socially concerned art projects and convenings. She previously served as Deputy Director and Director of External Affairs, among other roles spanning a seven year tenure at the vanguard public art organization, enhancing its audiences and presence in the Middle East, Mexico, Canada, and Europe.

The nonprofit executive Alyssa Nitchun will lead the museum after its last director, Gonzalo Casals, became the Cultural Affairs Commissioner of New York City.

12/10/2020

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art's cover photo

12/09/2020

“I see this dance form [vogueing] as an open-source code. The language or binary code is based on five elements: hands performance, catwalk, floor performance, spin dips, and duck-walking. I'm fascinated by how different performers continue to add to the code.” writes Rashaad Newsome (@rashaadnewsome).

TOMORROW DEC.10 from 11:30 PM (est) to midnight, Newsome invites the public to a special, socially distanced, live performance with several dancers from the New York Ballroom community at Broadway plaza between 46th and 47th street in celebration of his tripartite project, BLACK MAGIC. Newsome’s new site-specific work which combines improvisational performance, animations, and intricately designed graphics is part of @tsqarts, “Midnight Moment”.

*VIEWERS ARE REQUIRED TO WEAR MASKS AND STAY SOCIALLY DISTANCED.

[Image: (c) Rashaad Newsome, "Black Magic" (detail), 2020]

12/08/2020

Tune in next Wednesday, December 16, 8 PM (EST) PM for Mikki Yamashiro, aka, Professional Wrestler, Candy Pain’s live reading of, “Candy Pain goes to Washington”, for our next installment of Remote Intimacies. RSVP via 🔗 in profile. The reading will be followed by a conversation between the artist and curator and scholar Jeanne Vaccaro (@whateverjeanne).

There are only 2 things you need to know about Candy Pain; she loves to wrestle and she hates men. After a tragic tag team match in the ring, Ms. Pain retires from the mayhem of Professional Wrestling, only to find herself in the chaos and dirty fighting of Washington, DC. Tune into Remote Intimacies for a live reading of, Candy Pain goes to Washington. An angry, Lesbian, Professional Wrestling-centric reinterpretation of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". Will Candy Pain crush the corrupt corporate careerists on the Senate floor, or will this bruiser end up a loser? Click the 🔗 in our profile to RSVP to the main event NOW! NOW! NOW!

Remote Intimacies 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: Candy Pain, painting by Takako Olson (Mikki Yamashiro’s mother). Courtesy Mikki Yamashiro.

12/07/2020

Join us Tuesday, December 15, 6PM EST, for “Searching for missing narratives” a conversation presented by Residency Unlimited (RU) (@residencyunlimited) with artist Carlos Motta (@carlosalejandromotta), Karol Radziszewski (@karolradziszewski), and our own Interim Director Laura Raicovich (@lauraraicovich). The panel discussion will reflect on how the past can be used for shaping a better future and how to think about history whilst actively re-writing it.

“In the light of the recent protests and mass demonstrations led by repressed groups throughout Poland and the USA, the artists Karol Radziszewski (RU Alum 2011) and Carlos Motta will share how their respective and extensive archival based practices focus on queering and decolonizing histories to challenge dominant and normative discourses through artistic strategies and institutional critique. They will be joined by Laura Raicovich who provides a unique perspective as curator, writer and Interim Director of Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.”

Karol Radziszewski is an artist and founder of The Queer Archives Institute (@QueerArchivesInstitute), a non-profit artist-run organization dedicated to research, collection, digitalization, presentation, exhibition, analysis and artistic interpretation of queer archives, with special focus on Central and Eastern Europe.

Carlos Motta is an artist and historian of untold narratives and an archivist of repressed histories, committed to in-depth research on the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies.

This program is initiated and funded by the Polish Cultural Institute New York (@polishculturalinstituteny).

[Image: Queer Archives Institute, installation detail, 2016, Videobrasil, São Paulo]