The images on display in the Museum of the City of New York’s show, “Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York,”, are probably familiar to anyone who has lived in New York over the years, even those who aren’t part of the LGBT community. Gay people have always been attracted to New York and the freedom it afforded them to live more openly. Yet to see the many decades of public gay life, both before and after the liberating effects of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, is startling (or, for some, nostalgic). This very impressive exhibit of paintings, photographs and graphic design will be on view through February 26. An impressive selection of highlights, above and below, are courtesy of the Museum.
Portrait of Mercedes de Acosta (1923), by Abram Poole. Courtesy Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
Charley Inside Ramrod (c. 1976), photo by Leonard Fink. Courtesy LGBT Community Center National History Archive.
Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do (1989), bus poster designed by Gran Fury for Art Against AIDS/On the Road and Creative Time, Inc. Gran Fury. Courtesy New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division.
Alvin Ailey (1955), photo by Carl Van Vechten. Museum of the City of New York. Used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust.
DYKE, A Quarterly flyer (c. 1974),, designed by Liza Cowan. Courtesy Liza Cowan and Penny House.
Anna May Wong (1932), by Carl Van Vechten. Museum of the City of New York. Used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust.
New York Magazine, June 20, 1994. Courtesy New York Magazine.
Shazork!!!! at Danceteria invitation (late 1980s). Museum of the City of New York.
From left: Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw and Deb Margolin performing as Split Britches in Upwardly Mobile Home (1984), photo by Eva Weiss. Courtesy Eva Weiss.
New York City street photograph taken by anonymous photographer (1960s). Collection of Philip Aarons and Shelley Fox Aarons, New York.
Einsteins “Circus” window display (1986), by Greer Lankton and Paul Monroe, dolls and photo by Greer Lankton. Courtesy Paul Monroe for Greer Lankton Archives Museum.
Leonard Bernstein (undated), drawing by William Auerbach-Levy. Museum of the City of the New York.
Gladys Bentley at the Ubangi Club in Harlem (early 1930s), photo by Sterling Paige. Courtesy of the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY.
Blast at Ballet: A Corrective for the American Audience (1938). Courtesy private collection.
Melanie Hope, Clit Club (c. 1992), photograph by Alice O’Malley.
