Dear Caucus comrades and friends,
The theme in recent LGBT-art developments, at least in our personal experience, seems to be “incremental progress.” As an example, get this hot dish: The New York Times announced in August that its social pages will henceforth accept announcements of gay/lesbian unions, including portraits of the beaming betrothed. Photographer members take note: a rare opportunity to create a new genre from scratch.
A More Serious Example: The “Forbidden Eakins” symposium at SUNY/Stony Brook’s Manhattan center on the Monday evening of Gay Pride Week (June 24), co-sponsored by QCA. Organized and moderated by our own Jonathan Katz, the panel discussion was aimed at airing the current scholarship on Eakins’s art in relation to gender and homo/sexuality which, as followers of these pages have been reading, has been so conspicuously absent from the mini-blockbuster at Philadelphia and now the Metropolitan.
Besides Jonathan, seven speakers addressed a variety of aspects both personal and artistic. Jennifer Doyle (UC-Riverside) gave a broad introduction to the web of issues raised by Eakins’s work and methods, including not only sexuality but race, economics, and his connection to Walt Whitman, and exhorted scholars to examine their own methodological positions via the question, “What is your stake in Eakins’s work?” Following her lead, panelists each took a personal slant on the artist: Jonathan Weinberg (Getty Museum) discussed his own painting, which works from the same source photos that Eakins used, while Deborah Bright (RISD) pointed out that Eakins’s love of looking at male bodies should be related to the mass popular context of physique magazines and early commercial pornography. Other speakers were Martin Berger (SUNY-Buffalo), Michael Hatt (U of Nottingham), Michael Moon (Johns Hopkins), and James Smalls (UMD-Baltimore County).
The message got through to one influential art critic, Holland Cotter of the New York Times. He gave the event a paragraph in a piece about Andy Warhol a few weeks later, evoking Eakins as Warhol’s ancestor in the family of artists whose homosexuality ought to be acknowledged in order to fully understand their work. Cotter’s not-so-subtle message to the major US museums: get over yourself. Meanwhile, the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation in NYC will be opening an exhibit in September called “Warhol: explicitly queer” -- so at least someone is already taking Mr. Cotter’s advice!
We extend our kudos to all of those who participated in this hugely successful conference, and our thanks to all of those who attended -- well over a hundred.
Maura and Jim
maurareilly@yahoo.com
saslowj@aol.com
2003 New York Conference:
Caucus Events Preview
Preliminary plans for the February 2003 CAA conference in New York are now set. The Caucus will host an exciting (and potentially exhausting) menu of events at the Hilton Hotel, including a business meeting (Friday, 7:30-9 a.m.!!), a cocktail reception (Thursday, 5:30-7 p.m., East Suite, Hilton), and two panel sessions (Thursday evening and Friday midday). In addition, the Caucus will mount an art exhibition at the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Community Center in Greenwich Village, under the leadership of Noreen Dean Dresser and Robert Repinski, for which we hope to have a reception at the Center. Less formally, save Friday night of the conference weekend (February 21) for a gala soirée musicale at the home of co-chair Jim Saslow and his partner, Steve Goldstein, for all Caucus members and friends.
Just to get your mouth watering, the longer paper session, titled “Beyond the Usual Suspects: Expanding the Queer Canon,” will feature the following presentations:
“Publishing on Gay-, Lesbian-, Bi-, & Trans-themed Art”
Special Session
chair: Tee A. Corinne, artist and independent scholar (Friday, 12-1:30 p.m.)
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The Caucus exhibition will be held at the LGBT Community Center in Greenwich Village. The call for entries is a special insert in this issue of the newsletter. The theme is “Queer migrations” and the organizing committee is chaired by Robert Repinski and Dean Dresser. [a copy of the call for entries may be requested from Robert Repinski at rrepinsk@d.umn.edu or any of the officers]
Thursday, 12:30-2 pm - “Writing the female artist, 1600-1900” - special session sponsored by the Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History (ATSAH) - chair: Julia K. Dabbs; speakers: Laura Auricchio, Cynda Benson, Alexis Boylan
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2004 Arts Conference Taking Shape
We are happy to report an encouraging development in the long-range plan to organize an (inter?)national LGBTQ arts conference under Caucus auspices in Fall 2004. The Art History program in the Graduate Center at City University of New York (CUNY) has agreed to co-sponsor such a conference, which would allow us to stage it at the school’s convenient Manhattan location. This 2- or-3-day conference will bring together artists, historians, critics and curators, and performance artists with an interest in where queer culture is today, from as wide a geographic and cultural range as possible. It will provide a forum for the voices and images of contemporary artists in all media, and will spotlight contemporary discoveries and developments in art-historical research, criticism and theory, museums and galleries.
The impetus for this gathering is a sense that the artistic culture of LGBT communities once again finds itself at a crossroads: established paths are worn away or lead no further, while new challenges and contexts have opened up, and new directions must be charted. The conference will be open to suggestions for panels, workshops, papers, and performances to be solicited through an open announcement to the Queer Caucus membership, to CAA as a whole, and via other cultural media and institutions; a program committee of recognized artists, teachers, and scholars will evaluate the proposals. Inquiries into all areas of LGBT visual culture will be welcome, while at the same time the program will focus attention on a selection of currently urgent issues such as globalization, the decline of identity politics, or changing technology. Maura Reilly and Jim Saslow have solicited a nucleus of people to act as a startup organizing committee, including James Smalls, Patricia Simons, and Jonathan Katz. We look forward to refining and developing the proposed conference, but we can’t do it alone. We would be delighted to have more members volunteer to help, either on the organizing committee, on a broader advisory committee we are working to establish, or on a host committee of local people. Conferences need everything from abstract-readers to ticket-takers to media stars. Here’s your chance for fame and power. If you have ideas, comments, or time to pitch in, please contact one of us.
Queer Caucus for Art
Treasurer’s Report
We had a good response to our request for membership renewals. Thanks to those of you who took the time to do that. For those of you who haven't renewed, please do so soon. People who haven't paid the 2002 membership dues will be removed from our list with the publication of our next newsletter.
Our monies are held in an account with Omega Bank, State College, PA. Our current balance -- prior to the expense of this newsletter -- is $1,813.04. We should be okay, financially, for the publication of the next few newsletters and the cost of the Caucus reception at the CAA conference in New York (Feb. 2003). However, we will really need those 2003 renewals at the conference or by mail, if you aren’t attending.
Please feel free to contact me with your questions or membership corrections.
Sallie McCorkle
Treasurer and Membership Coordinator, Queer Caucus for Art (An Affiliated Society of the College Art Association)
Associate Professor, Visual Arts and Women's Studies
Studio Program Head, School of Visual Arts
210 Patterson Building
Penn State University
University Park, PA 16802
Office: 814-865-9471
Home: 814-355-1338
Fax: 814-865-1158
Email: smm11@psu.edu
Work on the updated and significantly expanded edition of The Bibliography of Gay and Lesbian Art continues. The editor is still interested in receiving citations to the literature. Please submit complete citations for books (i.e. author, title, place, publisher, date), exhibition catalogs (include the dates of the exhibition), journal articles (add the title of the article, volume number of the journal, and complete paging), essays (include the complete citation for the book in which the essay is located and complete paging), dissertations and MA theses, newspaper articles, and any other information you discover.
Progress will be delayed for two months while the editor works for one month as an exchange librarian at Wuhan University in China during October 2002. She will teach librarians at the university about current trends in academic library public services for one month The exchange position with Wuhan University is funded by both the University of Pittsburgh and Wuhan University. She will also visit Hong Kong and Beijing for two weeks. The trip will end with a visit to Tokyo and Kyoto to meet book dealers specializing in antiquarian art books. That portion of the trip is funded by a grant from the University of Pittsburgh Asian Studies Program. She will return to her position at the University of Pittsburgh after November 20, 2002.
The Bibliography of Gay and Lesbian Art is a major undertaking that is important to the art historical literature. When completed, it will provide access to books, exhibition catalogs, dissertations and MA theses, journal articles, essays, magazine articles (including those published in the gay press), and reviews. The bibliography will greatly benefit research on gay and lesbian artists and art history viewed through the lens of lesbian/gay studies. It is also a project of which the Caucus will be proud. While easier to locate information than it used to be, research in our field is a still challenging effort. Won't you please do your part to make the bibliography as complete as possible? Send relevant citations to the editor now at:
Ray Anne Lockard
Frick Fine Arts Library
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
e-mail: frickart@pitt.edu
REMINDER: Four journals from Haworth Press are available at 30% discount if ordered through the Caucus. And we get 15% of your savings for the Caucus. The membership form that was inserted in the last issue had the details and the membership form on the web has been revised to include check-off boxes and discounted prices. If you have questions about this, contact any of the Caucus officers. The journals are:
Recent issues of the newsletter and the revised membership form are available on the web at http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/9783/glc/glcn.html
Deadline for next issue:
1 January 2003
The editors welcome your submissions for the newsletter.