Divided States of America
Paste Interviews Art World Provocateur and Curator Alison Gingeras
Photos courtesy of Yves Saint Laurent/Collier Schorr, Donald Moffett/Marianne Boesky Gallery, Marlene McCarty/Sikkema Jenkins & Co., and Getty Images Entertainment
At a time when rife discrimination against the LGBT community was the norm, The Center became a cornerstone. New York’s LGBT Center, once a mere dream born in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall riots, spent the better half of the 1980s achieving the unthinkable. Launching cultural programs like “Second Tuesdays”—wherein prominent figures like Audre Lorde and Fran Lebowitz spoke to New York’s LGBT community. New York City’s first comprehensive AIDS bereavement program. YES, a program providing support to LGBT people who wanted to start families. Now in its newest and perhaps most forward-looking exhibition, this West Village mainstay, known simply as The Center, responds to renewed fears of division by boldly proclaiming the essentiality of identity politics.
A radical embrace of progressive values and inclusiveness, “Divided States of America” invites new blood into a historically symbolic brick and mortar, and frankly, an indispensable lifeline for LGBT community members. “Divided States of America” brings together judiciously curated works from over 30 artists. A direct response to this current moment in time, the selected works together form a chorus of opposition to the rancor that saturates today’s national political arena. Paste spoke with the exhibition’s lead curator and author of the soon-to-be-released The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up: Cobra and its Legacy, Alison Gingeras, to discuss the positive and unifying properties of art.
Paste: You’re well known for your avant-garde approach to curating, and this peculiar backdrop of The Center, a nearly 40-year-old bastion within the LGBT community, is no exception. Why this show and why now?
Alison Gingeras: Well, the day after the election actually I was meeting with The Center’s directors regarding a public art project we’re installing later this year at The Church of the Village just right across the street from The Center. There was just this palpable air of devastation and everyone was talking in doomsday scenarios, amidst which I found myself blurting out “We should do a show at The Center.” Now, the last time The Center was used to display a very prominent work was the debut of Keith Haring’s famed bathroom mural, which he famously painted just before his death from AIDS in 1990. Although unfamiliar territory for the directors, they said okay. I first reached out to Stuart Comer, who’s an old friend and eventually became a co-curator of the show, and together we compiled a list of artists. I ended up sending letters to 40 or so artists and almost immediately, I received responses from at least 20 of them saying “count me in.” There was a real collective urgency and incredible generosity on the part of these artists, who offered up considerably high caliber works—works that you normally wouldn’t find next to a community bulletin board within these very institutional hallway spaces where the show now hangs.
Paste: Now that the show has been up for a couple of weeks, what pieces in particular stick out to you as having garnered the greatest community response?
Gingeras: Every piece really does serve a purpose. In particular, I’m thinking of the piece that Donald Moffett contributed to us, which was a work that he made during the AIDS crisis when Bush— H.W. Bush—was president. I don’t know if you recall that piece from the show but it’s a light box that reads “Call the White House,” it has a phone number between two lines of text, then underneath reads “Tell Bush we’re not all dead yet.”
Paste: Yes, I do remember that piece.