Downtown 80’s Queer Art Crawl, Keith Haring & more

Professor Andrew Lear is a world-renowned expert on sexuality in art and the author of the best-known book on sexuality in Greek vase-painting.  He is the founder of Oscar Wilde Tours, the gay history tour company, and Shady Ladies Tours, the woman's history tour company.

Andrew Lear

Join us for a virtual tour of the Downtown art scene of NYC in the 80s to discover the queer art and activism by era defining artists!

<h3>Can't make the live event? Buy a ticket for the recording and watch the event in your own time!</h3>The Downtown art scene of New York in the 1980s has become legendary, in large part shaped by a younger generation of artists, many with queer identities. The East Village, NoHo, SoHo, and the Lower East Side became a haven for a diverse range of interdisciplinary artistic expressions, including the visual arts, performance, music, and poetry. Alongside a burgeoning nightlife, many new galleries, clubs, and alternative venues emerged to both cultivate these collaborations and display the radical art of the time. The gritty and urban environment of Downtown New York provided the perfect backdrop for artists to hit the streets with accessible, irreverent, and do-it-yourself art, created in a direct challenge to the elitist and exclusive art scene further uptown. Queer artists led the way throughout the decade—many of whom turned to activism when the AIDS epidemic hit, creating a new breed of the Artist Activist. This virtual Zoom tour highlights some of the most famous names to come out of the scene, and showcases their radical, queer art and lives. As a virtual art crawl, this tour maps their careers onto significant places in the neighborhood, many of which still exist today. George Benson, host of two virtual MoMA tours and a tour of Queer British Art, will bring three Downtown artists to life, and Keith Haring expert Amy Raffel will offer an in-depth look at the art and life of Keith Haring, the most famous person to come out of this scene.Highlights of the tour will include:<ul><li>Peter Hujar, a bohemian artist and stalwart of the East Village art scene who captured in photography some of the leading counter-culture figures of the day</li><li>David Wojnarowicz, whose diatribes and aggressive political stance turned him into the figurehead of the backlash against political inaction on AIDS</li><li>Robert Mapplethorpe, the world-famous photographer whose controversial images incurred the wrath of the US Government</li><li>PLUS an in-depth look at the queer work of Keith Haring, covering work created as he rose to stardom and his pivotal AIDS activism at the end of the eighties. </li></ul>Join us to explore how Downtown New York became the catalyst to new artistic movements that changed the way artists work to this very day.[Main Event Image Courtesy of the LGBT Community Center National History Archive]

Amy Raffel has a PhD degree in art history from the CUNY Graduate Center, with a minor in the history of photography, and a Master’s degree from the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU). Her dissertation, focused on Keith Haring's career and his Pop Shop, was published by Routledge in 2019. She currently works in interpretation at the Queens Museum, creating audio guides, visitor guides, wall labels, and interactive spaces.

George Benson (he/him) has worked as an educator at The British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. At MoMA he co-created the museum's first ever public queer tour, and at the British Museum he advised on their 2017 exhibition "Desire, Love, Identity—10,000 years of same sex desire."

<h2>FAQs</h2>When will the Zoom invite come?The Zoom invite will be in the CONFIRMATION EMAIL from your order AND it will be sent to your email address at 48hrs, 2hrs, and 10mins before the event. PLEASE CHECK YOUR SPAM AND SOCIAL FOLDERS IF YOU DO NOT SEE THE ZOOM INVITE IN YOUR INBOX. If you do not receive a Zoom invitation by 1hr before the event please get in contact with us.What time zone is the event scheduled in?The event is scheduled for 2pm EST (i.e. New York time). You can watch it in any time zone but please adjust to the time zone you are in.Will the event be recorded and available to view later?Yes the event will be recorded and you can buy a ticket for the recording above. If you buy a ticket for the recording you will be emailed automatically after the event with a link to the recording, available to view for 1 week after receiving the link. If you bought a ticket for the live event but couldn't make it please email us and we will send you the link to the recording.Refund policy?Refunds are available up to the start time of the event. After the start time, refunds are only available if you have been unable to access the event.

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Downtown 80’s Queer Art Crawl, Keith Haring & more

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