OutHistory.org Releases Unpublished Art Report

Study Shows Art Shows in NYC Museums, 1995-2007, Suppressed LGBT Themes

OutHistory.org, the website on LGBTQ history, on April 21, 2011, released a previously unpublished report documenting the suppression of LGBT themes in art shows in New York City museums, 1995-2007.

The report was initiated and supervised by noted art historian and curator Jonathan David Katz and paid for by a $5,000 grant from an anonymous donor. The study’s methodology was devised by Katz, then an Associate Professor in the Art History Department, State University of New York, Stony Brook, and Weena Perry, then a candidate for a Ph.D. in the History of Art and Photography at the University. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Policy Institute oversaw the project, and administered the funding.

The report, researched and written by Perry, was completed in 2007 but never published. Katz, Perry and the Task Force gave OutHistory.org permission to publish it.

The report, "the first study of its kind," surveyed exhibitions between 1995 and 2007 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), the New Museum, the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY), and the New York Historical Society.

The study concluded that these leading museums suppressed the findings of the last 40 years of historical scholarship on LGBT artists and LGBT-themed art:

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.

Perry, the report's author, now has her Ph.D. and is teaching at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, N.J., and Katz is now director of the doctoral program in visual studies, State University of New York, Buffalo.

Recently, Katz was also co-curator of the pathbreaking LGBT-themed show at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery titled “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.” That show received international publicity when, in December 2011, Wayne Clough, head of the Smithsonian Institution, pulled a video by artist David Wojnarowicz from the show.

“OutHistory.org is publishing this study as an important contribution to the national and international protests and debates that followed the censorship of ‘Hide/Seek’ by the head of the Smithsonian,” said Jonathan Ned Katz, co-director of the website. “That censoring of LGBT art in 2011 provides one more example of the silencing of LGBT art and artists documented in the 2007 report,” said Katz. (Jonathan David Katz and Jonathan Ned Katz are not related.)

OutHistory.org, produced by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center, was originally funded by the Arcus Foundation but now depends on donation from individuals.

Weena Perry: NYC Museums’, Part 3

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