I’m excited to announce that my LGBT gallery tour on Sat. Nov. 19 will be the most extraordinary such tour of the past year!  What will make this particular tour so exceptional?  To begin with, it will include an Argentine artist’s brand-new photo exhibit of 32 nude Latino men, the most male nudes I’ve ever shown on one tour, in the close to 10 years I’ve led them.  Also, there will be 3 exhibits on the Nov. 17 tour featuring LGBT artists that were included on my Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour the week before.  This was an all-time record of gay artists on one “Best Exhibits” tour, for which I choose the top 7 current shows from Chelsea’s 300 galleries, regardless of the artists’ sexual orientations.  Typically there end up being 0 or 1 gay artist exhibits among them, and on rare occasions as many as 2 on one such tour, but never 3, as there were last week.

My mostly straight participants on that tour marveled at a world-renowned bisexual artist’s show of juxtaposed photos of her bohemian and LGBT friends with old master portraits from the Louvre.  They also loved a break-out exhibit of a gay African-American artist, whose collages and video referenced Hip-Hop culture.  And I could hardly get them to leave a gay male artist’s delightful installation of thick, sensuous paint that is programmed to drop from the ceiling every few seconds in a riot of color.  All three of these shows, naturally, will be on the Nov. 17 LGBT tour.

One artist on the upcoming tour that my straight participants didn’t get to experience is lesbian Lisa Ross, who will speak to our group when we visit her exotic and masterful photography show of an Asian nomadic people who set up their bedrooms outdoors in the desert.  Lisa spoke to our gay & lesbian group three years ago when she last showed in Chelsea, and my participants ended up voting her show their favorite of the afternoon.  Lisa has an engaging, down-to-earth presence, and I anticipate that her presentation and Q&A session on her latest artwork will be as riveting as her previous one.

It’s going to be 7 fascinating gay and lesbian art stops that day, one after another.  And there will be dozens of LGBT folks in attendance (along with a smattering of straight folk – all are welcome) to share in the pleasure.

Oh, and did I mention that the 32 fully-frontal nude men in the one photography show are LATINO?

Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D.
Founder and Director
New York GalleryTours