In Relationship, their new book of photographs, artists Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker document the six-year span of their romantic union—a time period when their careers and lives were undergoing incredible (and parallel) shifts. By 2014, when the book concludes, they’d gone from grad students in the arts to artists featured in the Whitney Biennial (where these photos debuted publicly), and from making films at home on severely limited budgets to working on the blockbuster Amazon show Transparent.
Read MoreHugh Ryan Named NYPL's 2016-2017 Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar
I'm delighted to announce that I've been chosen as the 2016-2017 Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar by the New York Public Library. I'll be using my three months in residency at the library to research the working-class queer history of the Brooklyn waterfront, which will be the basis for a show I'm curating with Avram Finkelstein and Rachel Mattson at the Brooklyn Historical Society.
Read MoreBallroom Culture’s Rich Alternative to the Trans/Cis Model of Gender
“Butch queen” and “femme queen” are rooted in these shared experiences of queerness—these shared experiences of queen-ness—that connect both identities. They are terms designed to highlight the conceptual overlap between these categories, and also to celebrate it, turning the derogatory queer into the honorific queen.
Read MoreWhy Everyone Can’t Be Queer
. This is the essence of queerness: To be queer is to be judged, and to find community with others who have been judged similarly. This is less a matter of radical “inclusivity” and more a kind of qualifying criteria for entry.
Read MoreThe Orlando Shooter Was Born into America's Culture of Violence
hat we do know is that America still has some unsavory attitudes toward the LGBTQ community, even from the state level, and that we live in a very violent society—more than 33,000 Americans were killed in 2013 by guns, and the US leads high-income countries in the world in total firearm death rate. I sat down with Beverly Tillery, the executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP), to discuss how Mateen's acts fit into the broader pattern of anti-queer violence in America.
Read MoreFlatbush + Main Episode 03: Queering Brooklyn Spaces
In episode 03 of Brooklyn Historical Society’s podcast Flatbush + Main, Zaheer and I tackle the history of queer spaces in Brooklyn. We sit down with curator and writer Hugh Ryan, who helps us define “queer” as a historical construct and shares some amazing hidden queer histories that he has uncovered. We also visit Lesbian Herstory Archives in the neighborhood of Park Slope to talk with co-founder Deborah Edel, and listen to the reflections of one Brooklynite who shared his life and experiences in our oral history collections.
Read More'How do you measure a life?' Carrie Mae Weems and SVA Commencement 2016
The star commencement speaker of the morning was an artist who has spent her life doing exactly that, photographer and MacArthur Fellow Carrie Mae Weems. In introducing her, Walter Rivera, a member of the SVA Board of Directors, called Weems “truly exceptional” for her willingness to both “speak truth to power” and “teach others to find their voices as well.” Weems has been a dancer, photographer, folklorist, mother, union organizer and—throughout it all—a documenter of what it means (or can mean) to be a black woman artist in America today.
Read MoreIt’s Time to Take Cisgender Seriously
In a very real and measurable way, cisgender identity is no longer unmarked, universal, or assumed. It is denoted, limited, and in conversation with trans identities—or at least we’re moving in that direction.
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