Weena Perry: NYC Museums’, Part 3

Continued from: Weena Perry: NYC Museums’, Part 2

Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective

October 15, 1996–January 15, 1997

The catalog essays for Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective consistently employ language of the closet by treating Kelly’s sexual identity as the proverbial elephant in the room. Kelly, and the other LGBT members of his milieu, function as an unacknowledged LGBT half of a homosexual/heterosexual binary in the machismo-permeated atmosphere of postwar New York’s Abstract Expressionist realm. Robert Indiana, “Agnes Martin & Lenore Tawney”, James Rosenquist, “Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg”, along with Kelly, are presented as artists who moved to Lower Manhattan to get away from the Ab Ex artists of Greenwich Village “with whom they had little in common (27).” Could the absence of commonality have something to do with the fact that everyone mentioned but Rosenquist was not heterosexual, and that a number of the Cedar Tavern group were overtly hostile to gays? Moreover, the essay actually groups romantic couples in pairs— “Agnes Martin & Lenore Tawney” and “Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg”—without acknowledging the nature of the relationships within these pairs.

The entry for Robert Indiana in the online encyclopedia, glbtq: an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer culture identifies Kelly as Indiana’s lover during this period, when the above artists were living on the old industrial Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan. Of Kelly’s and Indiana’s romantic involvement we learn nothing. Yet we do learn that Kelly’s “good friend” Jack Younger, a fellow American studying in Paris under the G.I. Bill, married the “French actress Delphine Seyrig” in 1950 (14). Why inform us of the heterosexual coupling of Kelly’s associates, information that does nothing to advance our understanding of Kelly’s art practice, whereas awareness of Kelly’s homosexuality certainly would?

Another essay argues that Kelly’s transcendent impulses actually identify him with Abstract Expressionism more than the minimalism of the 1960s (64). “However, Kelly’s voluptuous and at once impersonal style is at odds with the high degree of individual expressiveness of the New Yorkers.” Why was Kelly’s style so “impersonal”? The catalog describes Kelly as sharing an “anti-illusionist” position with Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg while also noting that the three artists “developed in different directions (41).” Yet no note is taken of the shared sexual orientation of these artists, and how it might affect their perspective on the issue of personal expression in art by gay men in the dangerous anti-gay climate of this period in American history. Why are they so different in practice but similar in attitude?

Instead we are given to know that unlike the “action” paintings of the Ab Ex artists, “Kelly’s view of painting was more introspective and contemplative (11).” This choice of adjectives without social grounding is oddly evocative of both pop- and professional psychology and sociology of the 1950s, which invoked a host of euphemisms to single out the non-normative male and helped feed the homosexual panic of the period. How could an exhibition catalog in 1996, put out by a museum that had recently explored the LGBT issues in of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Ross Bleckner, engage in such retrograde euphemisms, misdirection, and suppression? Do we simply ascribe it to the closeted status of the artists, or is this gay effacement part of the larger culture of museums?

As with Jasper Johns art, Kelly’s work is regularly described in museum catalog essays as having sensuous or erotic qualities, although the human connection behind these impulses remains a specter. In this particular catalog, several of the essays make note of the erotic and sensual only to cast these qualities adrift by divorcing them from Kelly’s actual lived experience. A weird vacuum is created for anecdotes such as Kelly arranging his red paintings in a circle in his Coenties Slip studio & then dancing naked among them. Something is missing from the claim that “a virtually pagan component to his spiritual fervor” can be seen in Kelly’s practice. Something is missing too from the caption of the photograph of Kelly, nude, holding one of his paintings, “Kelly at Coenties Slip studio,” New York, 1958” (Fig 2, p.63). Who took this photograph? Who sees Kelly naked like this?

Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective

September 19, 1997 – January 7, 1998

Oddly, while there is a concerted effort to link Rauschenberg to the founding fathers—both Benjamin Franklin & Thomas Jefferson are invoked—the Guggenheim’s catalog for Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective overwhelmingly suppresses the personal realm. The Guggenheim eliminates all references to romantic relationships, even mentioning Rauschenberg’s ex-wife Susan Weil only in a professional context (further commentary on museums’ treatment of Rauschenberg’s marriage follows in the next section). We learn of Rauschenberg’s “…move to Pearl Street …in September 1955, one floor above his close associate Jasper Johns.” We learn that “[a]lso critical to Rauschenberg has been his relationship with friends and collaborators Cage and Merce Cunningham (23).” Cage and Cunningham were domestic as well as professional partners, but we do not learn of this connection. The rich possibilities of exploring the issue of closeted gay men creating a vibrant artistic community whose art has had lasting impact on contemporary culture remained an untapped source in an exhibition purporting to be a “retrospective”. The issue of Rauschenberg’s sexuality and its impact on his life and work was so stifled in the catalog that it’s not even possible to read into the text as one can with the Kelly retrospective of the previous year.

1) Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns: the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and MOMA

Despite the growing body of LGBT scholarship and encyclopedia entries on Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, both as a couple who were romantically and professionally involved during the 1950s, and individually as gay male artists, a wall of silence has been built by museums between the artists and the public. In the future, perhaps the reasons for this refusal to engage with the sexuality of the artists and its place in their work will be ascertained. Is it self-censorship on the part of museums? Is it because the artists, who are still living at the writing of this report, will only cooperate with institutions and professionals who shore up the wall of silence? Although the artists’ sexual identities long ago entered into the public record of art historical discourse, and indeed both Johns and Rauschenberg were featured among the 100 most famous gays and lesbians by New York magazine, public discussion of such matters has resulted in the censure of certain LGBT scholars who dared to put the issue front and center in their research.

Guggenheim

The Guggenheim’s retrospective on Rauschenberg ruthlessly wiped out all romantic references, even going so far to refer to Rauschenberg’s ex-wife Susan Weil only in her professional capacity as a collaborator with the artist. One almost has to admire the logic of “if there will no homosexual romantic references, then there will be no heterosexual references either.” An earlier group exhibition does manage to acknowledge that the two men knew each other: Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline February 8–May 12, 1996 describes Jasper Johns as an “early friend of Rauschenberg (160).” Given the utter blandness of the term “friend”, the bracing nouns of the title—risk, freedom, discipline—droop with weary irony.

The Whitney

When compared with the Guggenheim, the Whitney’s euphemisms about the pair border on the impertinent. Part two of The Whitney’s American Century exhibition discusses Rauschenberg and Johns while avoiding defining the nature of their relationship. “From 1956 to 1961, the two shared loft space in lower Manhattan. During this period, they nourished and encouraged each other in many ways, producing exceptional bodies of work, opening up territory that would be mined by artists for decades (89).” The essay does acknowledge Rauschenberg’s marriage to Susan Weil (92). But the reader is left to wonder in which “ways” did this nourishment and encouragement occur. Yet none other than Rauschenberg himself stated in a published 1990 interview, “It was sort of new to the art world that the two most well-known, up and coming studs were affectionately involved.

MOMA

One has to hunt through the MOMA’s catalog, Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, October 20,1996–January 21, 1997, in order to find reference to Rauschenberg. When finally reaching the chronology at the end, one sees that Rauschenberg permeates the 1950s section – but the nature of his relationship to Johns remains unacknowledged. This section even includes the famous quote from John Cage who once said of the pair, that “each seemed to pick up where the other left off (125).” It is absolutely crucial to underscore that only readers educated in the game of “pick out the gay subtext” will grasp that Cage is referring to something deeper and more emotionally intense than artistic collaboration.

What I find striking about the perpetuation of 1950s style homophobia in contemporary exhibitions is how this type of bias, this fearful or timid handling of sexuality, actually runs counter to the ways in which museums now handle other historic episodes of bias or violence, ranging from the murder and abuse of Native Americans during the expansion of the American frontier, to the genocide of millions of Jews during the Holocaust of World War II, and to the history of first the enslavement and then the civil rights violations of African Americans. On a nonviolent level of bias, consider that since the early 1970s there have been exhibitions devoted to women’s art and issues. Why is it still permissible to exclude LGBT issues from discussion when they permeate the collections of the most respected museums of the world?

The American Century, Part One 1900-1950

April 25 – September 20, 1999

Making Choices (catalog is titled Modern Art Despite Modernism)

March 16 – September 26, 2000

A comparison between how the Whitney and MOMA approach the representation of LGBT artists and art produced before the 1950s reveals great differences. As noted in the section below comparing exhibitions produced by the same institution, curator Barbara Haskell’s catalog for part one of The American Century (1999) employed closeting language in discussing the gay subject matter of Marsden Hartley, and also failed to put a name to the homophobia of the art world even while discussing the effects of this homophobia on gay artists. Haskell’s treatment of Paul Cadmus’ homoerotic works evaded the frankly gay nature of his art practice, remarking only that the secretary of the navy “lodged” a complaint against the Fleet’s In! “for its licentious portrayal of sailors (421).”

In comparison, MOMA’s Robert Storr approached the artists and works of the same period with a degree of openness completely absent from The American Century catalog. These differences are all the more striking because the exhibitions appeared only a few months apart from one another. Of the same period discussed by Haskell, Storr writes:

In their work an unmistakable homoeroticism appears to a degree in American art of this period outside of Demuth’s watercolors, the drawings and paintings of Hartley, and the poetry of Hart Crane, who was also a member of Kirstein’s circle. Thus Cadmus’s riotous Greenwich Village Cafeteria [p.183] introduces into the Social Realism of the day the come-hither glance of the man heading into the bathroom. …Tooker’s paintings are dreamier and more discreet…The example set by these artists, augmented by that of Tchelitchew, Cocteau, and a host of others, is a reminder that in times when intolerance of homosexuality ran high even among ‘progressives,’ the avant-garde was in many instances a haven for gay painters, sculptors, and photographers—make and female—and a context in which a variety of more or less explicitly gay sensibility could be explored (70).

What the passage by Storr reveals is that art does not have to have originated in 1980s or 1990s, or to be about HIV/AIDS, in order for a museum to deal frankly and honestly with the LGBT aspects of the works in its collection or on view. While the section comparing shows within the same institution discusses examples of MOMA’s shortcomings as an institution, Robert Storr, as a curator and essayist, serves as a fine example of what museums today should be doing when presenting LGBT artists and works to the public. Whether discussing contemporary or Pre War artists, Storr is clear in pinpointing and drawing out LGBT issues in a manner that is neither evasive nor patronizing toward any presumed delicate sensibilities of the “average” heterosexual viewer.

The American Century, Part One 1900-1950; Part Two 1950-2000

1999

The American Century was a two part exhibition: part one, 1900-1950 was curated by Barbara Haskell, while part two, 1950-2000 was curated by Lisa Phillips. For each catalog, the curators and catalog contributors radically diverged in their treatment of LGBT issues, thus begging a comparison. The index for the catalog for part one contains no LGBT references whatsoever, whereas part two makes room in its index for “gay rights,” “AIDS,” and “homosexuality.”

Besides the fact that “homosexuality” existed in the art world (and the world at large) before 1950, the reader should not be fooled by the indexical oversight of the catalog for part one. The American Century, 1900-1950 does include LGBT artists and themed work. Charles Demuth, Paul Cadmus, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and Pavel Tchelitchew were all represented. Some of the work evidenced no visible LGBT themes, but other works were of a homoerotic or gay romantic nature; while still others represented subjects who were in drag or who were transgendered.

LGBT biographical information would have helped in understanding certain of the works. However, closeting language obfuscated the poignant intensity of Marsden Hartley’s elegiac abstractions about his deceased lover, a German officer who died in combat during WWI. The catalog essay referred, twice, to Hartley’s lover as his “friend”, an appellation familiar to many in the LGBT community who have tolerated euphemistic introductions made by squirming family members in social situations. These kinds of euphemisms have a jarring presence in professional art publications of today.

What is especially disconcerting about the gay veiling of Hartley’s work is that elsewhere in the catalog is a discussion of Stieglitz’ milieu, where we discover that despite Hartley’s “homosexuality,” his work had a “virile” quality and was thus respected by the Stieglitz circle who rejected Charles Demuth’s “delicate niceness (203).” The homophobia of the Stieglitz circle is not remarked upon. Moreover, it is most puzzling as to why the subject of Hartley’s sexual identity had to be avoided when actually discussing the very work where this absence was most striking. In an age where Oprah Winfrey’s LGBT guests have brought heterosexual audience members to tears with their stories of suffering at the hands of bigots, of lives left unrealized because of the closet, and of lives lost because of AIDS, the Whitney Museum of American Art and certain of its curators would seem to underestimate the people who flock to its exhibitions, curious about the art and artists under study.

In comparison, The American Century, 1950-2000 comes off as a celebration of LGBT presence in the art world. LGBT issues actually make the index. “Homophobia” is discussed as part of the 1950s culture of anxiety and xenophobia (37). Beat poetry is singled out for its “openly gay lyrics (61).” The catalog falters by displacing Andy Warhol’s gayness onto his “entourage” while reserving the term “asexual” to describe him (130). It regains its footing with an extensive discussion of AIDS and the Culture Wars of the 1980s. However, unless a gay artist is addressing AIDS or is in drag, then the artist’s sexual identity or LGBT issues of the work do not rate exploration. In some cases, works dealing with LGBT themes are included but not discussed as such, including Larry Rivers portrait of his then lover Frank O’Hara, Jess’ deconstruction of macho comics, and Catherine Opie’s self-portrait of a stick figural lesbian domestic scene scratched into her back. Despite the Whitney’s overall inclusion of lesbian produced or themed art for the period under study, the lesbian presence barely registers in the catalog essays for The American Century. In the catalog, lesbian or feminine homoerotic issues in 1970s work were masked by the assumed heterosexuality of “Feminism” in art, although LGBT scholarship has taken note of the homoerotic aspects of presumably heterosexual works such as Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party.

On the Edge: Contemporary Art from the Werner and Elaine Danheisser Collection

Sept 30, 1997 – Jan. 20, 1998.

Tempo

June 29 – September 9, 2002.

When comparing exhibitions within MOMA, there are striking differences in how curators or catalog essay contributors handle LGBT artists and issues, even those of the contemporary period. In the catalog for Tempo, Paulo Herkenhoff doesn’t acknowledge Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ gay identity in relation to his work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) (1991). In discussing the two not quite synchronized clocks hanging side by side, Herkenhoff hints that the work is about simultaneous orgasm, “the attainment of pleasure”, but notes rather vaguely that the slight difference between the second hands indicates the “limits of desire”. However, when cross-referencing the same work with Robert Storr’s On Edge, one discovers “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) being discussed in the context of Gonzalez-Torres’ lover Ross Laycock, who “was stricken with disease [AIDS] not long before this piece was made (60).” Storr sadly notes the “daily occurrence” of death for Torres’ “generation of gay men.” Storr’s observations are in keeping with the dominant reading of Perfect Lovers as AIDS allegory: the clocks will stop when the battery runs out. In this context, Herkenhoff’s reading is patently offensive.

Notably, Storr’s exhibition occurred in 1998, some four years before Tempo, so one cannot argue that the museum is following a linear narrative of social progressiveness from Tempo to On Edge. What we’re seeing here is how the interpretation of LGBT themes in exhibited works is at the mercy of individual curators, catalog contributors, or the museum’s education division. While it certainly is not desirable that museums and their staff become homogenized at the level of a corporate restaurant chain, it is troubling that there is such great vacillation from show to show with regard to what the public can expect to learn about the LGBT artists or themes being exhibited. MOMA’s own mission statement claims that the museum must “re-evaluate itself” periodically so that it “encourages openness and a willingness to evolve and change” [footnote website]. Why shouldn’t curators, catalog contributors, or the educational departments of museums be expected to operate within the boundaries of the museum’s own mission statements? In an essay for Modern Art Despite Modernism (2000), Robert Storr writes that the vigorous presence of gay artists, such as Marsden Hartley and Paul Cadmus, before World War II “is a reminder that in times when intolerance of homosexuality ran high even among ‘progressives,’ the avant-garde was in many instances a haven for gay painters, sculptors, and photographers—male and female—and a context in which a variety of more or less explicitly gay sensibility could be explored.” MOMA should heed the words recorded in its own curatorial record as way forward in its future representation of LGBT artists and works.

Conclusion

Analysis of exhibition catalogs and web pages reveals that New York’s major museums have many shortcomings with regard to the discussion and presentation of LGBT produced or themed art on display in special exhibitions between 1995-2005. Certain museums completely excluded or barely included LGBT artists and themed works: the New York Historical Society showed nothing with LGBT themes during the period under study; LGBT themes account for only 1.49% of the total exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York, while the Metropolitan was barely ahead with 1.81%. Museums specializing in modern and contemporary art did not meet expectations, given the number of known LGBT artists and themed work in their exhibitions: the Museum of Modern Art (3.04%); The Whitney Museum of American Art (6.35%); and the New Museum (6.79%). The Guggenheim outstripped all other museums in the study (12.19%).

Most of the artists included in the study were “homosexual”, meaning women and men either self-identified as lesbian or gay, or are discussed as such in the public record of LGBT encyclopedias, historical or art critical publications, or news articles. Knowing that 65% of the artists were gay or lesbian, and 8% bisexual, only underscores the dismal record of the museums with regard to issues of sexuality. Moreover the sheer diversity of LGBT themes, ranging from sexual and gender expression to issues of health leave no room for doubt that LGBT themes have been significantly addressed in the art on view in New York since the mid 1990s. Artists have paid tribute to their lovers (Marsden Hartley) and their LGBT friends (Nan Goldin). Artists have explicitly explored homosexuality (Robert Mapplethorpe). Artists have critiqued gender norms (Catherine Opie and Mathew Barney). Artists have delved into the loss and suffering caused by HIV/AIDS (Felix Gonzalez-Torres).

Comparison between exhibition catalogs and web pages reveals that the museums tend to be more open about acknowledging LGBT issues in catalog essays (48.7% for catalogs, but only 17.7% for web pages). The huge gap between these figures is a problem because didactic materials on the websites are more likely to be taken from the original wall text of the exhibition. While it was not possible to gain access to the wall text during research for the report, interviews with LGBT art professionals indicate that museums significantly downplay the LGBT content or meaning of the art on display in their institutional spaces. In short, exhibition viewers are much more likely to learn about LGBT themes in exhibited works if they choose to read catalog essays, an act that involves a significantly greater time commitment and monetary expense than either viewing the exhibition in situ or on the museum’s website.

Caution should be exercised before declaring that the museums are necessarily more open in discussing the sexuality of the more recent generation of LGBT artists. The Guggenheim’s Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1995) was certainly open about the artist’s sexuality, as was MOMA’s On Edge (2000). Yet MOMA’s Tempo (2002) did not discuss the artist’s sexuality. As can been seen by the dates, the most recent exhibition is precisely the one which excluded mention of sexual orientation. Moreover, it is not possible to argue that museums are silent about the sexuality of artists who lived during a time when there were harsh legal and social penalties for being gay. For example, in comparison to Barbara Haskell’s euphemistic treatment of pre-War LGBT artists and art in The American Century, MOMA’s Robert Storr approached the artists and works of the same period with a marked degree of openness in Modern Art Despite Modernism.

The inescapable conclusion is that the policies, practices, or personal beliefs of individual curators, catalog contributors, or the museum’s education division go a long way in determining how much or how little the public will encounter about the LGBT themes of the art on display. It is troubling that there is such great vacillation from show to show and year to year. Unlike the treatment of LGBT issues within the discipline of art history or in cinema and television studies, there is no clear chronological arc of openness and inclusiveness with regard to how New York’s museums have presented LGBT artists and themed art since 1995. It should be emphatically noted that while the choices and exclusions of individuals working for museums are very important, all these separate decisions over the years add up to a pervasive institutional climate of silence that produces both great incoherence in the treatment of LGBT issues and substandard scholarship. The resulting stagnation that comes from eliminating not only cutting edge academic work—but also long established changes in scholarship—from museum catalogs and curatorial visions is a terrible loss for the art world and the public.

Forty years after the birth of the modern LGBT rights movement in New York, the conditions in several of New York’s major museums seem to be mired in a pre-Stonewall sensibility. At a historical moment that places sexuality at the forefront of a number of contemporary debates, the New York museum world’s continuing silence is baffling. Given the bottom line motivation of today’s media conglomerates, which espouse socially progressive attitudes when it is in keeping with their targeted demographics, one has to conclude that at its heart museum reticence about homosexuality is not about fear of losing money. If anything, museum-goers in New York tend to be more socially sophisticated than the average consumer of popular media. So who is holding museums back from joining the 21st century? Is it the social sensibility of certain museum directors and staff? One has to ask this question because while institutions seem faceless, it is people who decide what to exhibit and what to say about the cultural objects in their care. Given the profound influence of shifting codes of representation on venues for visual culture outside the fine arts, it is time to rethink any remaining assumptions about the disinterested nature of museum stewardship. The failure of museums to engage in a wide swathe of art historical scholarship is of grave concern because it raises the question of historical accuracy. Failing to educate the public about the LGBT subject matter or significance of the work, or of the work’s producer, does a profound disservice to the work as a cultural document, to the LGBT community which has produced a number of greatly respected and admired artists, and to the society as a whole. A chief innovation of the LGBT civil rights movement is the act of “coming out,” and through this public speaking of LGBT identity, resisting the enforced silence that comes with homophobia. Therefore museum culture’s refusal to engage honestly with the historical record not only falsifies history, but perpetuates the belief that homosexuality is “unmentionable.” Evaluating New York museum’s representation of LGBT artists and art is thus an important aspect of the Task Force’s overall project of gaining national equality for the LGBT community.

Notes

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