Author Talk: Alice T. Friedman on Queer Moderns

🏙️ Queer Moderns: The Lost World of Max Ewing’s Jazz Age New York

📅 Thursday, December 4, 2025 | ⏰ 7:00 PM ET | 💻 Virtual via Zoom

Join Queer History Boston for an illuminating evening with art historian Alice T. Friedman, as she takes us inside the glittering, queer avant-garde of the 1920s and ’30s — a world where modern art, jazz, and queer identity collided in dazzling style.

Based on her new book Queer Moderns: Max Ewing’s Jazz Age New York, Friedman resurrects the remarkable story of Max Ewing (1903–1934): musician, photographer, bon vivant, and the connective tissue linking some of the era’s most fascinating artistic circles. Through his photographs and letters, we meet a constellation of figures — Gertrude Stein, Paul Robeson, Isamu Noguchi, Berenice Abbott, and more — all moving through a vibrant, interracial, and unapologetically queer creative world that pulsed across New York, Paris, and Venice before fading with the Depression.

✨ About the Author

Alice T. Friedman is the Grace Slack McNeil Professor Emerita of American Art at Wellesley College and founding codirector of its Architecture Program. Her books include American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture and Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Cultural History.

🌈 Why You’ll Love This Event:

🎷 Step into the jazz-soaked nights of the 1920s and 30s and meet the queer moderns who reimagined art and identity.

📸 Discover Max Ewing’s forgotten photographs — playful, provocative, and decades ahead of their time.

🏛️ Learn how queer and Black artists shaped the foundation of modernism as we know it.

💻 Experience the talk live on Zoom from wherever you are — cozy clothes encouraged, martinis optional.

🎟️ Your Ticket Makes a Difference

All ticket sales directly support Queer History Boston’s mission to preserve and share LGBTQ+ history. Recordings of our events are made publicly available on our YouTube channel, ensuring these stories continue to educate and inspire long after the event. Thank you for helping us keep queer history alive and visible. ❤️