November 20, 2014–January 17, 2015
Opening: Wednesday,November 19, 6–8pm
The James Gallery
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Hours: Tuesday–Thursday noon–7pm,
Friday–Saturday noon–6pm
www.centerforthehumanities.org/james-gallery
Curator: Katherine Carl
The Lenin Museum reflects on the historical contradictions and complexities of intersections between Communism and anti-Communism as well as ideology and sexual identity. The project acknowledges the Lenin Museum as a site for memorialization not only of Lenin but of the fate of free expression of sexual identity in Russia in periods of criminalization between 1933 and 1993, after Lenin’s decriminalization in 1917. The show reflects on how Cold War forces of anti-Communism in the West instrumentalized homophobic sentiments as a weapon in the struggle against the Soviet Union, and how the anti-Communist discourse contributes today to the construction of political homophobia in the post-Soviet Russia.
The Lenin Museum at the James Gallery is co-sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, the Public Science Project and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Exhibition programming at The James Gallery
All events are free, open to the public on a first-come, first-serve basis, and are ADA accessible.
Friday, November 21, 6:30pm
Conversation: “On Conviviality, Affect and Politics”
Patricia Ticineto Clough, Sociology and Women’s Studies, Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY; Jasbir Puar, Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University.
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Women and Society.
Tuesday, November 25, 6:30pm
Gallery tour: Presence and Public Space
Gwen Shaw, Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Co-sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in Art History.
Wednesday, December 3, 6:30pm
Screening and conversation: “Russian Political Bodies from Lenin to Putin”
Yevgeniy Fiks, artist; Jonathan Flatley, English, Wayne State University; Anastasia Kayiatos, Critical Theory, Russian, and Women’s Studies, Macalester College.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Public Science Project.
Thursday, December 4, 4pm
Gallery tour: Queer Memory
Jack Crawford, Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Co-sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in Art History.
Monday, December 8, 6:30pm
Tour and performance: Can a Homosexual be a Member of the Communist Party?
Yevgeniy Fiks, artist; Harry Whyte, editor.
The Amie and Tony James Gallery joins the Center for the Humanities’ mission to create dialogue across disciplines. Located in midtown Manhattan at the nexus of the academy, contemporary art, and the city, the James Gallery brings a range of pertinent discourses into the exhibition space through a number of innovative formats. While some exhibitions remain on view for extended contemplation, other activities, such as performances, workshops, reading groups, roundtable discussions, salons, and screenings have a short duration. As a space for interdisciplinary artistic and discursive activities, the gallery works with scholars, students, artists and the public to explore working methods that may lie outside usual disciplinary practices.
The Center for Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY, encourages collaborative and creative work in the Humanities at CUNY and in the intellectual communities it serves through seminars, conferences, publications and exhibitions that inspire sustained and engaged conversation and change inside and outside the academy.
For more information
Jennifer Wilkinson: T +1 212 817 2020 / [email protected]
