By
Patric Stillman
 |
| Secret by Maurice Cassidy |
For
the sixth edition of PROUD+, the Studio Door art gallery is collaborating with Founding
Father of Queer Art History, Jonathan D. Katz. He is the Associate Professor of
Practice, History of Art and Gender Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the
University of Pennsylvania.
Katz
is an art historian and curator who specializes in queer art. He is known
for his contributions to the field of LGBTQ+ art history and his research on
the intersection of art and sexuality. Katz has written extensively on
queer artist, queer aesthetics, and the representation of LGBTQ+ indignities in
art. His work has played a significant role in highlighting and contextualizing
the contributions of LGBTQ+ artists throughout history.
Katz
is recognized for his work on significant exhibitions such as
"Hide/Seek" in 2010 at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and
the traveling exhibition "Art AIDS America" in 2015.
Here
are highlights from a recent interview with Katz:
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| Jonathan D. Katz |
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Hide & Seek exhibition - National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian (2010)
|
How did you find yourself at the forefront of the work that
you do?
"I was studying art history as an
undergraduate and kept seeing queer things. No one was talking about it.
When I did try to bring it up, my professors told me ‘that’s self interested
critique and you should stay away from that.’ But I was a street activist so it
was natural for me to politicize my endeavors and engage in a form of activism.
It wasn’t an easy road. I got thrown out
of the best graduate schools in the country. It’s been a checkered road
because inevitably when you start doing the work that I do without a template,
you encounter the weird homophobes and there are so many of them, especially in
the arts. Who knew? We thought that this was a safe place.”
 |
Lavender
Resilience Pride March by RD Riccoboni |
You have been traveling to Latin America recently, what
programs are you involved with there?
“I have a significant Andrew W.Mellon
Foundation grant which allows me to fund Latin American institutions to create
exhibitions on the theme of dispossession. Almost all of them include queerness
as a form of dispossession and some of them are exclusively about queerness.”
 |
Reflections
I by Gerard Huber |
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| Watching You by Stevan Dupus |
 |
Champagne
by Dmitriy Gushchin |
Exhibitions
have already been built around art created in response to HIV/AIDS (Columbia),
Trans Identity in Latin American Art (Panama), Histories of Slavery (Chile) and
Amazonian Indigenous Art (Peru).
Last year,“First Homosexuals” opened in Chicago. How
is that project expanding?
“I’ve been working on (this exhibition) for
the last six years. The first iteration was last year and the bigger iteration
will be in 2025, which will entail an international tour at A-list museums. It
uses the date 1869, when the word ‘homosexual’ was coined, as a marker.
It looks at art 50 years before and after that date to understand what the
invention of a binary sexuality resulted in.
The interesting thing about this show is that
its international in scope so there is work from Turkey, Iran, India and other
places that you wouldn’t expect to find queer work. A lot of major acknowledged
masterpieces that have long been central to a national culture that is being
reclaimed under queer guise.”
 |
| Michael T. by Amos Badertscher |
What advice would you give an emerging LGBTQ+ artists who
are seeking to gain recognition or navigate the art world?
“Nobody ever got ahead by being inauthentic.
Recognize that you are at the tip of the spear. And the world will bend towards
you. It may not do so in the timeframe that you want but it will.”
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| Queer Time No. 2 by Tanner Blackwell |
During
PROUD+, San Diego will be treated to select works from Jonathan D Katz personal
collection that bring attention to two major contemporary photographers, Del
LaGrace Volcano and Amos Badertscher, whose work is rarely seen in the
US. Del is currently working on a solo exhibition for Tate Modern in
London and in Sweden. Amos is having a retrospective of his work at Albin
O Kuhn Gallery at University of Maryland Baltimore later this year.
“How grateful I am to have a role with PROUD+ because this is
all piling up. Each of our individual endeavors are slowing shifting the
perimeters of what the art world understands itself to be.”
 |
| Kathy Acker by Del LaGrace Volcano |
The sixth annual PROUD+
exhibition: June 29 to July 29, 2023
Gallery artists reception: Saturday, July 8th form 6 - 9 PM.
The Studio Door art gallery
3867
Fourth Avenue in Hillcrest, SD 92103
patric@thestudiodoor.com 619.255.2867
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday from Noon to 7 PM.
Free admission
The public is encouraged to
support the artists and gallery through the purchasing of artworks.
Patric Stillman is a visual artist and contemporary art gallery owner. He is known for his figurative paintings and the gay-themed international bestseller Brotherhood Tarot. He is the gallery owner of The Studio Door, one of Hillcrest’s premier art gallery.
