THE CLASSICAL NUDE AND THE MAKING OF QUEER HISTORY

From:USC

 June 29 – September 7, 2014

 ONE Archives Gallery & Museum

626 North Robertson Boulevard

West Hollywood, CA 90069

Organized by the Leslie Lohman Museum for Gay and Lesbian Art and curated by scholar Jonathan David Katz, The Classical Nude and the Making of Queer History investigates the continued centrality of the classical nude over centuries of art making. The exhibition explores how images of the classical past have acted as recurring touchstones in the historical development of same-sex representation, and as such, constitute a sensitive barometer of the shifting constructions of what we today call gay and lesbian or queer culture. The classical past is thus gay culture’s central origin myth, and its representation offers far more information about the culture that appropriates the classical past then it does about that past itself. In tracing this trajectory of the classical nude across history, this show concentrates on four major periods: Antiquity, the Renaissance, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the modern/contemporary periods.

This exhibition at the ONE Gallery is the first west coast showing of works drawn from the collections of the Leslie Lohman Museum in New York, and is a condensed preview of a show to open at the Leslie Lohman Museum in October 2014.

The Classical Nude and the Making of Queer History is organized by Jonathan David Katz and is presented in collaboration with the Leslie Lohman Museum for Gay and Lesbian Art. Supported in part by the John Burton Harter Trust.