Many of my regulars know that when I started New York Gallery Tours almost 12 years ago, it was at first exclusively a gay men’s gallery tour.  In that time I’ve led well over 100 LGBT tours (and hundreds more non-LGBT tours), all of them completely different from each other.  A queer sensibility on my tours is at the heart of what I do, and it shows at times even in my general public tours.  It’s involuntary, of course, my seeing the whole world from my gay perspective.  Therefore, it gives me particular joy when I’m able to put together an LGBT gallery tour – on Sat. Dec. 14 – that will be one of my most extraordinary yet.

First of all, I had never heard of the existence of any gay or lesbian Aborigines (have you heard of any, though of course they must exist?), and the Dec. 14 tour will include a lesbian Aborigine’s exhibit of new collages and videos that explore her double “otherness” – that is, her feeling of being shunned as a lesbian in Aborigine society, and likewise being discriminated against as an Aborigine in Australian society.  It’s a very personal show, including nude self-portraits and also markers of her childhood.

Also on view on this tour is an exhibit of major LGBT historical significance: a brave gay artist’s photos of fully frontal nude men, created in the 1960s when it was actually illegal to make and exhibit this kind of art (photos of fully nude women were legal back then, but not nude men).  Interestingly, the photos are all Polaroids, because it was impossible to find a film developer who would do the job.  The artist, as it turns out, was not a photographer but a drawing artist, and these photos that he took were studies for his nude drawings.  Therefore, he didn’t have his own darkroom.  In time, he went on to found Colt Studio, an important arthouse for burgeoning homoerotic art.

And there’s lots more, including an appearance by gay artist Brad Greenwood, who will speak to us when we visit his show of fun, whimsical paintings, some of which have a homoerotic sentiment.  All told, 5 of the 7 shows we visit will be by LGBT artists.  Of the two others, one is a photography show by a straight female artist of nude Dutch women that includes some explicit lesbian content.  If a straight man had created these photos, I may not have included it on my tour, but being that it’s a woman’s perspective on the female body, it seems to fit right in.

New York is both the art capital of the world and the gay capital of the world.  On this tour, the two intersect magnificently.

Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D.
Certified Queer and
Founder & Director,
New York Gallery Tours