Harmony Hammond was awarded one of the Veteran Feminist Artist citations at the “Salute to feminists in the arts” at the National Arts Club, New York. She also reports on a number of recent and upcoming exhibitions which are included in the calendar. She was interviewed by Lester Strong for the January 2004 issue of A & u: America’s AIDS magazine. Her work is also reproduced and/or discussed in Rudolf Baranik: the napalm elegies (2003 exhibition catalog for Jersey City Museum with essay by David Cravin who discusses her work in relation to that of Christo), in “Marie Laurencin: une femme inadaptée” in Feminist histories of art by Elizabeth Louise Kahn (Ashgate, 2003) in an essay on Laurencin in relation to Louise Bourgeois, Hannah Wilke and Hammond, and in The sculptural idea by James J. Kelly (Waveland, 2003). Her essay “The front line, the big picture, the long haul: an essay in two parts (theory and practice)” is included in From our voices: art educators and artists speak out about LGBT issues (Kendall/Hunt) edited by Laurel Lampela and Ed Check.
Helen Langa (American University) reports that her new book Radical art: printmaking and the life in 1930s New York will finally be published by the University of California Press in February 2004. Not much queer content, but there is a chapter on proletarian labor images and the gaze.
Ann Meredith was part of the World AIDS Day panel at UC Berkeley “A humanistic approach to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.” She showed slides and talked about her 10-year “Until that last breath: women with HIV/AIDS 1987-1997” project. Also, her “Strap ’em down: the world of drag kings” was selected “Best of Festival-Arts” at the Berkeley Video & Film Festival, 1-2 November 2003.
Carrie Moyer was one of the featured artists in “8 painters: new work” in the November 2003 issue of Art in America (cover story).
Christopher Reed (Lake Forest) has published a longer version of the short presentation he gave during a Caucus lunchtime session at CAA a few years ago about the street-markers installed by the city of Chicago in a gay neighborhood. The citation is “We’re from Oz: marking ethnic and sexual identity in Chicago” in Environment and planning. D: Society and space, vol. 21, 2003, p. 425-440.
We mentioned in the last newsletter that Queer Caucus for Art co-chair Maura Reilly is the new Elizabeth A. Sackler Curator of Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. There is more to the story. This is the first “Curator of Feminist Art” position at a U.S. Museum. The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art was created to permanently house “The Dinner Party” within newly renovated space on the Brooklyn Museum’s fourth floor. Dr. Reilly, a specialist in feminist and queer art production and a free-lance art critic for Art in America, will be the first curator associated with the Center. She is currently co-curating (with Linda Nochlin) an international exhibition on contemporary feminist art scheduled to open in the Fall of 2006 and is the author of the forthcoming book Le Vice à la Mode: Gustave Courbet and the Vogue for Lesbianism in Nineteenth-Century France.
Frameline will commemorate the films of Marlon Riggs on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death on 5 April 1994. Events will take place in San Francisco and Berkeley. More information from their website at http://www.frameline.org
Mildred Thompson (b. 1935 in Jacksonville, Fla.) died on September 6, 2003. She was a painter, sculptor, and photographer, as well as a musician and educator. Finding life difficult in the U.S. for a black woman, she spent many years in Germany and Paris. She is survived by her partner Donna Jackson. An exhibition of her work is planned for City Gallery East in Atlanta, starting January 9th.
Photographs by John Trobaugh were removed from display for “inappropriate” content at an exhibition at Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The photographs portray Ken and G.I. Joe posed in romantic (though not sexually explicit) couplings. For more information and a sample letter to the college president, see “action alerts” on the website of the National Coalition Against Censorship. http://www.ncac.org
Jonathan Weinberg was profiled in the Los Angeles gay newspaper Frontiers on the occasion of his exhibition “Physical culture” at the Advocate Gallery at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center (May-June 2003). Reproductions accompanied the profile.
The 2004 Whitney Biennial will include the following GLBT artists: Tom Burr, David Hockney, Roni Horn, Emily Jacir, Isaac Julien, Robert Longo, Catherine Opie, Jack Pierson. The full list of artists appears on the museum website at http://www.whitney.org