Hide//Seek//Difference//Desire//Northwest Call to Artits Recap

The call to artists deadline was last night at midnight. It was so exciting for me to see all the submissions to the exhibit and to see the community support. We had over 30 artists submit work to the show from all over Washington and Oregon. I am so excited to start reviewing the work and creating what I hope to be a great exhibit of local artists.

Thank you to all the people who forwarded the call to artists and to the artists themselves for submitting works. Queering the Museum project is moving full steam ahead with big dreams and passion for our work.

Qt(A)M Panel Line Up Finalized

the Qt(A)M Symposium has finalized the Saturday panelists. This is a the last link to cement the program and oh am I happy to have this set in stone.

The speakers are as follows:

Kris Morrissey - Director of the Museology Program at the University of Washington. Prior to her appointment as Director in September of 2007, Kris Morrissey was the Curator of Interpretation at the Michigan State University Museum and Director of the MSU Museum Studies Program. She is the editor of the journal Museums & Social Issues published by Left Coast Press, Inc. She has over 20 years experience working in museums and has taught university courses on a range of subjects, including informal learning, interpretation, new technologies, research and evaluation. She is interested in the ways museums engage, educate and listen to individuals, families, communities and society. Morrissey is also a PI for New Directions Research, Service and Academics in Visitor Studies, a project that will prepare a new generation of evaluators and museum practitioners through an innovative apprentice-styled laboratory that integrates the strengths of mentoring, fieldwork, academics and client-centered experiences. Led by the University of Washington's Museology Program and joined by partners the Woodland Park Zoo and the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Center (LIFE), New Directions will develop a model of university and community collaboration. Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services 21st Century Museum Professionals Program.

Rahul Gariola - received a joint PhD in English Literature and Theory & Criticism from the University of Washington (UW) in December 2009. He has completed doctoral research on fellowships and grants at Cambridge University (Pembroke College and CRASSH), Humboldt University of Berlin, Cornell University (School of Criticism & Theory), and The Simpson Center for the Humanities.  He views teaching as a form of classroom activism and contribution back to the community, and strives for harmony between learning inside of the institution with living outside of it.  He also views publishing as a necessary mode of “outreach activism” that empowers the dialogues forged inside the classroom with a global reach, and regularly engages in community outreach, volunteer work, conference and professional gatherings, and peer reviewing for academic journals. Rahul has published widely in the fields of postcolonial studies, cultural studies, gender/sexuality studies, and non-western and American literary studies, and has also been a prolific journalist and cultural critic for Popmatters.com. He is also connected throughout the Seattle arts & entertainment community, and has sat on Advisory Boards for Tasveer, Trikone, Seattle Art Museum, CHID, and the Northwest Film Forum.  

Wynne Greenwood -  a queer feminist artist working with video, performance, music, object, role and relationship. Her work has been included in performances and exhibitions at independent and institutional spaces internationally, including the Tate Modern, the Whitney Biennial, the Frye Art Museum, The Kitchen and On the Boards. Greenwood currently teaches performance and video at Seattle University and through workshops and after-school programs. 

Jonathan D. Katz  - Director o SUNY Visual Studies program, co - curator of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American portraiture and Art, AIDS, America. His works looks at the intersection of art history and queer history, one of the busiest intersections in American culture, and yet one of the least studied. A specialist in the arts of the Cold War era, he is centrally concerned with the question of why the American avant-garde came to be dominated and defined by queer artists during what was perhaps the single most homophobic decade in this nation's history. The four essay reproduced here all attempt to read the work of some of these central Cold War artists like John Cage, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg in terms of resistance to dominant culture. But theirs' was a queer kind of resistance, almost illegible as dissident, for it employed strategies like silence, chance, emptiness and coding to mark its distance from the dominant social historical climes. Paradoxically, these quiet, closeted forms of resistance soon came to define the American avant-garde across the board.

Jen Graves -  has made her living writing about art and culture for 14 years. Before that she studied English at Stanford University. She's currently art critic at The Stranger, and writes for magazines including Art in America. She has taught art history at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and is a Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Grant recipient.


Our performance Artist:

ilvs strauss -  is a queer, mixed race: writer, performer, mixed media artist, and lighting designer based in Seattle. As a solo performance artist, she reinvents for herself and for others the artistry of storytelling via Slide Shows, narrating stories to images with all the candor and sincerity and humor that is inherent in the personal, anonymous photographs. Her work has been shown at On the Boards, Northwest Film Forum, Century Ballroom, Seattle Repertory's Leo K Theater, and Bumbershoot Music Festival. As a Lighting Designer and Technical Director, she has worked for Salt Horse, the Cherdonna and Lou Show, the Pat Graney Company, and LINGO dance theater. She also has had the distinct honor of portraying Jesus Christ in 'Homo for the Holidays' for two years running.


Phew that is a line up! Wait until you see what is in store for the opening of Hide//Seek//Difference//Desire//Northwest. 

Queer Desire in the Archives

This quarter I have been working with the Curator of Visual Material at the UW Special Collections. She pointed out an interesting topic when thinking about queer material in the archives. Do archivists consider queer desire pornographic? If so, how do they handle the material? Furthermore, what if they accept the material and digitize it, will the viewer find it offensive? Whats the best approach to prepare the viewer to see queer desire in the archives?

I have been thinking about this for some time and many things come to mind. My response to these questions are questions back to the archivists. How do you prepare viewers to see racism? How do you prepare them to see nudity of any variety in the archives? How does prepping the viewer change the learning outcome? If we prep the viewers before they see the archive holdings does it present the material as something that was or is offensive?  Does this perpetuate racism, sexism and homophobia?

I have seen several naked people (mostly women) in archives, racism runs rampant and I have certainly seen my fair share of homophobia. My conclusion is you don't have to prep them nor do
I don't think you can prepare someone to see the content in the archives. However, it is an interesting topic and has room for further investigation.

Other things I have noticed in the archives, there is queer history. The problem I face is how to search for it, how to offer a better understanding of queer in the archive, and how to allow independent curiosities to tease it out. To start to grapple with these ideas I did a series of searches in the finding aids of the Special Collections at UW. The following include the results.


Searching the word Gay is the most successful word

	Personal Papers/Corporate Records	(48)
	Visual Materials Collections	(11)
	University Archives/Faculty Papers	(8)

However, Lesbian found

	Personal Papers/Corporate Records	(21)
	Visual Materials Collections	(6)
	University Archives/Faculty Papers	(3)

Many of these Lesbian results are duplicates from the Gay query; however, it should also be noted that there is a Lesbian archive in Tacoma, Wa. This certainly changes the findings of Lesbian material at the UW special collections.

Furthermore, Homosexual found

	Personal Papers/Corporate Records	(9)
	University Archives/Faculty Papers	(1)

Transgender found

	Personal Papers/Corporate Records	(1)
	University Archives/Faculty Papers	(1)

Transvestite found
 Personal Papers/Corporate Records (1)
 Visual Materials Collections (1)

Queer found 

 Personal Papers/Corporate Records (5)

And Invert
 nothing.

This summer I hope to query queer in the archives and see what concrete themes I can find. I also hope to push this through to the web. Fingers crossed and schedules full I move forward.

Qt(A)M Call to Artist

 Queering the Museum presents: Hide//Seek//Difference//Desire//Northwest

Call to Artists - Tacoma, WA

Deadline: Monday, April 9, 2012 (midnight)

Exhibit Dates: May 12 – June 12, 2012

Hide//Seek//Difference//Desire//Northwest

Queering the Museum invites Pacific Northwest artists to submit work to be included in the upcoming exhibition Hide//Seek//Difference//Desire//Northwest at "The Space." This show creates an opportunity to respond on the local level to Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, which will be on view at the Tacoma Art Museum March 17 - June 10, 2012. Submitted artwork should reference portraiture and/or queer culture.

To Apply

Please send the following items as attachments to Erin Bailey at erinbailey33@gmail.com:

○      CV/Resume, including phone number, email, and mailing address.

○      1 to 3 jpeg images of the work to be included in the exhibition.

                                         ■ If the work is not yet completed, please send images of past work and a timeline for completion.

○      A detailed description of the proposed work, its relation to the topic, dimensions and medium.

If a work is purchased during the show, Queering the Museum asks for a 30% commission to help offset the costs of the symposium.

Eligibility

Applicants may apply as a single artist or as an artist team. Applicant must be 18 years or older and must reside in Pacific Northwest. Works in any medium will be considered, but preference will be given to 2 dimensional works. If an artist is selected, the work must be ready for display by May 5, 2012.

If Selected

Selected artists will be invited to submit one piece to be shown in Hide//Seek//Difference//Desire//Northwest. Artists will be invited to attend the symposium at the Henry Art Museum and will be offered free admission +1 to the opening event. Selected work will be viewed by a number of local and national museum professionals, advocates, and collectors, and included on the Queering the Museum blog Queering the Museum Blog

About Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is an internationally acclaimed exhibition that explores same-sex desire in American portraiture.

The exhibit comes to the Tacoma Art Museum March 17 – June 10, 2012 and has previously been mounted at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Hide/Seek features artwork by well known artists, including Andy Warhol, Annie Liebovitz, Andrew Wyeth, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jasper Johns, Thomas Eakins, Berenice Abbott, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

Hide/Seek teases out the queer history interwoven in American art, offering a method for museums to present and explore queer culture within their programming. A high profile censorship of Hide/Seek while at the Smithsonian exposed the opposing views and challenges that many cultural institutions face when addressing difficult subjects. For more information, visit the Hide/Seek website or Post Defiance blog. 

From the Hide/Seek website:

“Hide/Seek considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern America; how artists explored the fluidity of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art, especially abstraction—were influenced by social marginalization; and how art reflected society’s evolving and changing attitudes toward sexuality, desire, and romantic attachment.”

About Queering the Museum

The Queering the Museum project (QTM) was inspired by the observation that queer culture is often viewed as a tangential element of history. QTM seeks to develop methodologies for representing queer culture in museums. Specifically, QTM seeks to overcome barriers in queer representation and fragmented history in museums, while teasing out queer culture’s role in mainstream history.

The project pulls from multiple fields bringing the community, scholars, and advocates together to present a holistic interpretation of queer culture. The first undertaking of QTM is a two day Queering the Art Museum symposium [Qt(A)M] May 11-12, 2012, followed with a Queering the History Museum symposium [Qt(H)M] in 2013. For more information and updates about the Queering the Museum project visit Queering the Museum Facebook page. 

About the Symposium

On May 11-12, the Henry Art Gallery is partnering with the Tacoma Art Museum and the University of Washington to host Queering the Art Museum, a two day symposium addressing roles and perspectives of queer culture in the museum context though lectures, conversations, tours, and other programs.



Join Dr. Jonathan D. Katz, co-curator of both Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture and Art, AIDS, America and Rock Hushka, Director of Curatorial Administration at the Tacoma Art Museum and co-curator of Art, AIDS, America for a conversation that will address their work including queer perspectives in museum exhibitions and programs.



The symposium will continue with a panel conversation turning the queer gaze of local academics, artists, and museum professionals toward the future of queer inclusion and exhibitions in art museums. Following the panel, the Tacoma Art Museum will host guided tours with Jonathan D. Katz and Rock Hushka of Hide/Seek. The symposium will conclude with a workshop and series of local art activities, including a reception for Hide//Seek//Difference//Desire//Northwest. For program updates visit the Henry Art Gallery website.

Presenting Venue for Hide//Seek//Difference//Desire//Northwest

The Space is a nonprofit in downtown Tacoma, WA that builds a creative community and connects artists by providing time, space, and support. The Space offers nearly 4,000 square feet of event space in a classic loft-style setting and features floor-to-ceiling views of downtown Tacoma and Commencement Bay. Look for special arts events occurring each month including music shows, festivals, fashion shows, film screenings, theater, burlesque, contemporary dance, and visual art exhibitions. For more information, email thespace729@gmail.com or visit The Space Facebook page. 

Holes In History- the search to fill the gaps of Queer history

I hear all too often that queer history is fragmented, which is undoubtably true. Generally speaking, there are holes in history. One could argue that there are holes in every facet of history, thinking specifically to greek history, chinca/o history, women's history, middle class history and especially history before the photograph. History is the victim of time, which ironically is the very element that creates history. So is queer history too fragmented to be pieced together, or have we not put in the work? Teasing the queer out of history creates our history.

The archivist I work with mentioned an equally interesting point. She emphasized looking for the other side of queer history, those working against queer people, performing medical treatments and experiments and other variations of queer bigots. Those stories inform the struggle of queer culture and are more likely to be the victim of time.

The next time you hear that queer history is fragmented, ask them if they have ever been in their local archive? If they know any historically queer figure in their town. Most likely they will say no; however, if they are able minded and know an answer to any one of these questions ask them to write about it. Start a blog, make a Facebook post, or even share the information on the new QueerWiki.

We have a history, there are tools to write, we just need to put in the time.

Queering the Art Museum Symposium

 On May 11 and 12
Henry Art Gallery and Tacoma Art Museum
FREE for Students and UW Staff/Faculty  | $10 Henry Members | $20 General Audience

The Henry Art Gallery is partnering with the Tacoma Art Museum and the University of Washington to host Queering the Art Museum, a two day symposium addressing roles and perspectives of Queer culture in the museum context though lectures, conversations, tours, and other programs.

Join Jonathan D. Katz, co-curator of Hide and Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture and Art, AIDS, America and Rock Hushka, Director of Curatorial Administration at the Tacoma Art Museum, co-curator of Art, AIDS, America for a conversation that will address their work including Queer perspectives in museum exhibitions and programs.

The symposium will continue with a panel conversation turning the queer gaze of local academics, artists and museum professionals toward the future of queer inclusion and exhibitions in art museums. Following the panel, the Tacoma Art Museum will host guided tours with Jonathan D. Katz and Rock Hushka of the current exhibition of Hide and Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. The symposium will conclude with a workshop and series of local art activities. For program updates visit henryart.org.

Queer in the History Musuem

I've often noticed that museums approach queer culture as parenthetical to the greater historical context. This idea was the at the core of the exhibit Hide and Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, exposing that queer desire is not tangential to the cannons of American art but a recognizable thread throughout. This idea applies to the influence of queer culture on American history, its not tangential but influential.

Many museum are reexamining how to address queer history as a non tangential element included in the greater story. However, we live in a world caught up with being politically correct. This desire to be "pc" comes from our nation's history which is littered with cultural miscommunications and biases. To avoid repeating the mistakes of previous generations many are left navigating a rugged path to successfully address queer history in a politically correct and socially cogent manner. 

Navigating that path can be very difficult but Seattle's Museum of History and Industry took the lead with style. The Museum of History and Industry developed an award wining program called MOHAI Minutes, a program dedicated to creating short videos of two residents stumbling upon different elements of Seattle's diverse past. These videos highlight places, events and themes that built Seattle into what it is today. It's a history adventure that won't make you fall asleep!

Recently MOHAI  Minutes sucessfully addressed Seattle's queer past and all the while remaining "pc," proving it can be done! The video discussed Shelly's Leg, a disco bar that had an influential role in Seattle's queer past during the 1970's. The video does an excellent job of illuminating the rise and fall of Shelly's Leg and its impact on Seattle's queer history. Not to give away too many of the interesting factoids, this disco was the first gay - straight alliance in Seattle's queer nightlife. First we danced together, now we can get married together. Watch it, you wont be sorry.