Photo © Vivienne Sassen, from the series Venus & Mercury, 2019 (detail); cover of Orlando, guest edited by Tilda Swinton/Inspired by Virginia Wolf, Aperture issue 235 Info

Talks / Screenings / Book Events / and Beyond

Wednesday, May 29

Selected Shorts: Stonewall at 50, 7:30 pm. 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the riot at Stonewall Inn that spawned the gay liberation movement, an act of civil and social engagement that has evolved to embrace a wide range of sexuality, gender, and identity issues. This evening will feature works that reflect the importance of the movement, accounts from The Stonewall Reader from Penguin Classics, and also some of its most famous, outspoken, poetic, and fabulous artists and writers. Co-hosted by Kathy Tu and Tobin Low from Nancy, the acclaimed podcast from WNYC Studios featuring stories and conversations about the queer experience today. With readings by Ivory Aquino (When We Rise), Kay Ulanday Barrett (When The Chant Comes), Becca Blackwell (They, Themself and Schmerm), Kate Bornstein (Gender Outlaw), John Benjamin Hickey (The Good Wife), Michael Early (Forever), and Beth Malone (Fun Home). Symphony Space/Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, 2537 Broadway at 95^thStreet, NY, NY InfoMore about Stonewall 50 events here

Vince Aletti | Issues, talk and book signing, 6-8 pm. Aletti first conceived of the book in 2009, while co-curating an exhibition at the International Center for Photography about the legendary fashion photographer Richard Avedon. Aletti, who was a photography critic at The New Yorker for many years, found that “a lot of potentially great images existed only in magazines,” having never been made into prints. Aletti then realized that, for a long while, fashion magazines were doing the work of galleries and museums, curating and displaying fine-art photography before photography was accepted as a legitimate art form, and before photo galleries and museums even existed. For artists like Avedon and Irving Penn, who shot for Bazaar and Vogue, “magazines were a way to get their work out into the world.Dashwood Books, 33 Bond Street, NY, NY Info

Tilda Swinton with B. Ruby Rich | Orlando, 6 pm. Tilda Swinton has guest edited the new issue of Aperture magazine and curated the organization’s current exhibition (on view through July 11), a two-part celebration of gender fluidity inspired by Orlando, the 1928 Virginia Woolf novel about a poet who transitions from male to female and lives for three centuries. The actress, who starred in the 1992 film adaptation of the book, will speak with scholar and critic B. Ruby Rich about the story’s legacy and how it inspired the current issue of the magazine and exhibition. The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Builkding, Celeste Bartos Forum, 476 Fifth Avenue, NY, NYInfo

Uncredited photo from NYPL Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Info

Thursday, May 30

How Soon is Now | Art, Activism and Accountability, 6:30 pm brings together artists, activists, critics, and institutional leaders to confront art's responsibility in crises of accountability. How can artists and the systems that support them rise to the occasion? Are museums places of enlightenment, and if so, should they be held to higher standards than other organizations? What is dirty money, and what should be done with it? Can institutions satisfy their baseline missions without compromise? When is art a space for improving the world, and when is it a cover for nefarious activities? Can art do more—or has it done too much already? The New School, The Auditorium at 66 West 12^thStreet, NY, NY Info

Friday, May 31

Queer History Walk, 6 pm: Join a teaching fellow for a free walking tour that explores the rich queer history of the neighborhood surrounding the Whitney Museum. This sunset walk looks to the past to reflect on the present by bringing visitors to select sites marked by queer history and culture. From the Hudson River piers to the clubs, visitors are invited to consider their connection to the changing landscape of the neighborhood that the Whitney now occupies as well as to the history of the city. Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, NY, NY This event is free with registration; future dates: June 7, 14, 21 and 28; August 30; September 27.

SUBLIMATION presents four happenings at 1 Rivington Street, starting with Vicnent Tiley | Scorpions, followed by Ala Dehghan | VR/Ultraviolet Realism; Queer Galaxies; and Ambient Space of Dimension. Organized by Nathan Storey Freeman, hosted by Stellar Projects, SUBLIMATION symbolized the exchange of “bodies” and “spirits” similar to laboratory phase transitions between solids and gases. Alchemists used language more evocative of the mystical implications of SUBLIMATION, manifesting the process’s dual nature in the spiritualization of the body and the corporeal formation of the spirit. SUBLIMATION fluctuates in and around the intersection of the chemical and the mystic. Info

© Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled, 1989, courtesy Visualaids.org Info

Monday, June 3

Public Art Fund presents: Public Art and Activism: 1980s to Today, 6:30 pm. This month the Public Art Fund will present the seminal billboard “Untitled”, 1989 by Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American, b. Cuba, 1957-1996) to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and WorldPride in New York City. Public Art Fund originally organized the project in 1989, when Gonzalez-Torres first installed this work on the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Thirty years later, the work will be shown in its original location: Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, above Village Cigars and across from the historic Stonewall Inn bar. On the occasion of this project, Public Art Fund will hold a panel discussion on public art and activism spanning almost 40 years. The panel will feature pioneering artists and activists whose practice and work in the public realm addresses social mobilization and advocacy for human rights. The Frederick P. Rose Auditorium at The Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, NY, NY Info

Tuesday, June 4

Brian Cronin | The More I Draw: b.b. Cronin [a film by Chalkley Calderwood, screening, 7 pm. The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY Info For the complete schedule, including awards ceremony on Sunday, June 9, go here

Continuing

Diverse Humanity is a groundbreaking series of photography books that showcase the rich diversity and complexity of LGBTQ communities around the world. The books spotlight marginalized and frequently persecuted communities that have challenged rigid definitions of family and personhood. Exploring human relationships in all their intricate variations and bringing together a distinguished group of photographers, Diverse Humanity—the first photobook series of its kind—takes a nuanced look at a wide range of people and cultures. The project explores gender diversity, gender expression, and sexual orientation championing a view of humanity that moves beyond binary perceptions.The photobook series is a unique collaboration between the Arcus Foundation, Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios, and The New Press. Info

Coming Up| Thursday, June 13

Stonewall 50 Celebration with Tiona Nekkia McClodden, 7:30 pm. The Whitney is hosting a celebration in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots organized in collaboration with 2019 Biennial artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden. Inspired by McClodden’s ongoing artistic research and practice, as well as the rich LGBTQ+ history of the Whitney’s surrounding neighborhood, the party looks to the legacy of the Meatpacking District’s queer club culture. The festivities will include drinks, music by DJ SHYBOI, and performances by McClodden and other guest artists. Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, NY, NY In

In Galleries / Lens-based Art

Continuing

Orlando, curated by Tilda Swinton, who draws upon the central themes of the novel—gender fluidity, consciousness without limits, and the deep perspective of a long life—to offer a collection of images and writings that celebrate openness, curiosity, and human possibility. “Woolf wrote Orlando,” Swinton notes, “in an attitude of celebration of the oscillating nature of existence. She believed the creative mind to be androgynous. I have come to see Orlando far less as being about gender than about the flexibility of the fully awake and sensate spirit. This issue of Aperture will be a salute to indetermination and limitlessness, and a heartfelt celebration of the fully inclusive and expansive vision of life exemplified by the extraordinary artists collected here.” Aperture Gallery & Bookstore, 547 West 27^thStreet, NY, NY Info

Left: Peter Hujar, Gay Liberation Front Poster Image, 1'970; courtesy of Leslie-Lohman Museum

Collier Schorr | Stonewall at 50: 15 intergenerational portraits of LGBTQ+ activists and artists, celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. This project, generated by partnerships made in the Stonewall 50 Consortium, an organization committed to producing programming, exhibitions, and educational materials related to the Stonewall uprising and/or the history of the LGBTQ civil rights movement, brings together participants of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising with activists who have followed in their footsteps.The Alice Austen House, 2 Hylen Boulevard, Staten Island, NY Info

In Galleries

Janet Cooling | 1972-1982, 6-8 pm. This show, curated by Ashton Cooper, looks at a brief period in the career of Janet Cooling. The works in the show were made as Cooling was transitioning from Chicago, where she absorbed the influence of the Imagists, to New York, where her work fit into a new wave of queer art-making developed by artists such as Martin Wong, David Wojnarowicz, and Roger Brown. Against the backdrop of the “death of painting” and the emergence of the the AIDS crisis, Cooling held a “romantic sensibility of the artwork as an expression of personal feeling,” according to a release. Cooling, who was included in the US Pavilion at the 1984 Venice Biennale in a show organized by Marcia Tucker, was also part of the curator’s “Bad Painting” show at the New Museum. Jack Hanley Gallery, 327 Broome Street, NY, NY Info

Saturday, June 1

Vivienne Flesher | the face of another,5-7 pm. Jack Fischer Gallery, 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA Info

Gay Liberation Front marches on Times Square, New York City, 1969. Photo by Diana Davies. NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division.

In Museums

Continuing

Art After Stonewall, 1969-1989. Leslie-Lohman Museum of LGBTQ Art, 26 Wooster Street, NY, NY and New York University Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East, NY, NY Info

Stonewall 50; Nightlife Before and After Stonewall. New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at 77^thStreet, NY, NY Info. 

Nobody Promised You Tomorrow | Art 50 Years After Stonewall. Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY Info

Love & Resistance | Stonewall 50. New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 3^rdfloor, Fifth Avenue at 42^ndStreet, NY, NY Info