Jeffrey Byrd recently performed at San Diego State University as part of the Northwest Electro/Acoustic Musicians Festival. During the fall of 2002, he also performed at the Des Moines Art Center and 2Gyrlz Performative Arts in Portland. A residual object from an earlier performance was shown at Currency 2002 Performance Festival at Chashama Gallery in Manhattan. January through March, he will have a solo exhibition of photographs at the University of Toledo and a performance at the closing of the exhibition. He was profiled by Paul Harvey on his noon radio show on December 31st.
Photographs by Cathy Cade are featured in Harrington lesbian fiction quarterly, v. 3, no. 2, 2002.
Lenore Chinn was profiled by Barbara J. McKee for a curriculum web project at Purdue University (professor Susan Ressler). The profile can be found at http://www.chairgrrl.com/lenorechinn/index.htm and McKee’s main page is at http://www.chairgrrl.com
Hilliard Todd Goldfarb, curator of the Richelieu exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, is featured and pictured in “Richelieu, politician as conoisseur” in New York times, Oct. 7, 2002, p. E5.
Archaeologists unearthed a monument built by Hadrian to commemorate the death of his Greek lover, Antinous. The ruins were found in the villa at Tivoli, outside Rome. (The advocate, Dec. 24, 2002, p. 17)
Harmony Hammond participated in the “To kiss the spirits” exhibition at Artemisia Gallery in Chicago (benefit for Hollis Sigler Memorial Fund) and “Postcards from the edge” at Sperone Westwater in New York (benefit for Visual AIDS). She will be signing copies of Lesbian art in America on late Tuesday afternoon at the Womens Caucus for Art (18 February 2003) and lecturing at John Sims Center in San Francisco on February 27th. She wrote a blurb for Terry Wolverton’s new book Insurgent muse: life and art at the Woman’s Building (City Lights, 2002) and published “The front line, the big picture; The long haul: an essay in two parts (theory and practice” in From our voices: art educators and artists speak out about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered issues (L. Lampela and E. Check, editors; Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hall, 2002). She also participated in full-page anti-war advertisements in The New York times and The New Mexican.
Cassandra Langer was invited visiting speaker for the Women’s and Gender Studies Department of New Jersey City-University on November 21, 2002. Her talk entitled “Representations of the female in visual culture” covered art, cosmetic surgeries, cyberbodies, fashion, advertising, feminisms, gender, sexualities, lesbian resistance, and transformations using lesbian artists including Romaine Brooks, Harmony Hammond, Cathy Cade, and Tee Corinne.
Cyndra MacDowall has taken a position as Assistant Professor (Photography) at the University of Windsor School of Visual Arts. Her portrait of lesbian artist/activist Amy Gottlieb is in the collection of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives National Portrait Collection. The collection is expanding and was exhibited in October in the Toronto City Hall. cf http://www.clga.ca Additionally, she is in a national touring group show entitled “Unexpected encounters” (curated by Gail Bourgeois). Venues include Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Richmond, B.C.
Ann Meredith has received funding for two of her projects, done with the sponsorship of DYKE TV. The Zellerbach Family Fund has awarded $1500 to “Forgotten angels, a matter of honor: women who serve in the military.” “Angels” is co-sponsored by the Women’s Division of the Veteran’s Hospital in San Francisco and will premiere May-August 2003 at the Presidio in San Francisco. The Open Meadows Foundation has awarded $710 to “Twilight: the aging of lesbian elders” which will premiere at the San Francisco LGBT Center on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2003, with a public forum and panel from noon to 3 pm. More info from annpmer@pacbell.net
The head office of Oxford University Press in England has forbidden its Canadian affiliate from selling a book published by its U.S. branch -- Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art by caucus member Richard Meyer. The publisher is afraid that criminal charges might be brought as a result of a photograph of a young boy taken by Robert Mapplethorpe that is included in the book. Richard spoke at the University of Toronto in the F. Ross Johnson/Connaught distinguished speaker series on September 20th. (from a press release from Glad Day Bookshop, Toronto, Sept. 19, 2002)
Michelangelo’s “David” is scheduled for a seven-month scrubbing, ending in March 2003. The cleaning will take place in the galleries at the Accademia in Florence, and is his first cleaning since 1873.
Susan Ressler has been appointed to the CAA Committee on Women in the Arts.
“A conversation with Edward Sullivan” appears in CAA news for November 2002.
Photographer Conrad Ventur was selected as one of “the 25 most likely to ...” by Next magazine (New York gay bar rag) in its November 22 issue.
“Fred Wilson, who will represent the U.S. at the 2003 Venice Biennale, is the winner of the 2002 Larry Aldrich Foundation Award, given by the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Conn. He receives $25,000 and an exhibition, which will open in January 2004.” (Art in America, Jan. 2003, p. 134)
Once or twice a year, Bob would blow through town (sometimes with his partner Jonathan Silin, sometimes solo) and often Vance would invite me to have a drink and/or dinner with them. I always enjoyed those times, relaxing with Bob, comparing notes on cultural events, gossiping (never maliciously), sharing an understated camaraderie. Bob would sometimes mention that he’d like to take my portrait, but it was always “next time” he was in town. I still have many of the handwritten cards that Bob occasionally sent from the Las Vegas Liberace Museum, or New York, or wherever his projects took him.
When he finally called to set up an appointment, I tried to both express and contain how honored I was to be among the many famous gay and lesbian writers that Bob had photographed since 1985. On that afternoon in October 2000 Bob positioned me in the Hormel Center's handsome ceremonial space on the third floor of the library to take advantage of the natural light and just chatted me up. I waited for him to direct me to “smile” or “look over there,” but there was nothing of the sort, just a progression of casual camera clicks. Then we went up to the 6th floor, to the precise area where his photographs had been exhibited some years previously, and we had another relaxed session. I eagerly anticipated Bob finding time to get into the darkroom, and was overwhelmed when I finally picked up the results from Vance. The two portraits -- one from each sitting -- were the most handsome images of myself I had ever seen. Perhaps because of my position as head of the Hormel Center, despite my small body of published writing, Bob had seen me as someone important. It is with pride and sadness and profound gratitude that I see myself growing into Bob’s vision.
Jim Van Buskirk
Hormel Center
San Francisco Public Library
jimv@sfpl.org
Also of note: The fall 2002 issue of The James White review (published by the Lambda Literary Foundation) devotes a special memorial section to Robert Giard. The section includes the tribute that Allen Ellenzweig gave at a memorial service on August 18, 2002 as well as an essay by Giard and five statements by authors which are accompanied by Giard portraits. The authors: Samuel R. Delany, Mark Doty, Christopher Bram, Allan Gurganus, and Matthew Stadler.
Portland (Oregon) photographer Donna Pollach (b. 1949) -- whose images were published in WomanSpirit magazine, Margins (lesbian publishing issue), and elsewhere, especially in the 1970s -- died of cancer October 7, 2002. She is survived by her partner, Sue St. Michael; her twin sister, Karen; her mother, Edith; her son, Sam; and her former partner, Laurie Moore. A fund has been set up in Donna’s memory to raise money to publish a book of her photographic portraits. Contributions may be sent to: Portland Teachers Credit Union, PO Box 3750, Portland, OR 97208-3750 (Donna Pollach Fund).
Photographer Herb Ritts died in Los Angeles on 26 December 2002, aged 50. From the obituary by Ginia Bellafante in The New York times: A photographer whose subjects ranged from Madonna and Cindy Crawford to the Dalai Lama and Kofi Annan, Mr. Ritts, like George Platt Lynes, relied on clean, graphic compositions that often portrayed models and celebrities in the visual language of classical Greek sculpture.
Photographer, artist and bon vivant George Daniell was born in Yonkers in 1911 and died on 14 September 2002 in Trenton, Maine. An exhibition of photographs from the 1930s-1950s, including works by Daniell and four others, opened at Sarah Morthland Gallery in New York on the day he died.
Obituaries for Ed Cervone (1945-2001), John Burton Harter (1940-2002), and Darold Perkins (1922-2002) appear in The archive (Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation), #8 (fall 2002), p. 14. Works by each of the artists appear in the foundation’s permanent collection.