Stonewall Art Comes to Frost Art Museum

Brigitte Onorato/Staff Writer

The “Art after Stonewall, 1969-1989”  exhibit will make its way into the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum on Saturday, Sept. 14. The exhibition’s curator, Jonathan Weinberg, will give a lecture on the exhibition from 4-5 p.m., followed by the opening.

Visitors can expect to see different forms of art, such as photographs, paintings, sculptures, film clips and videos related to the LGBTQ movement that was sparked after the Stonewall Riots of 1969.

The artists behind the framework were done by openly LGBTQ and straight identified artists, including Vaginal Davis, Andy Warhol, Michela Griffo, Lyle Ashton Harris, David Hockney, Greer Lankton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie, Alice Neel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lynda Benglis, and Kiki Smith.

Many of them who had experienced and documented what had led up to the historic movement, protests, and the aftermath .

The artworks will represent the major impact that the LGBTQ community experienced during the rise of the LGBTQ civil rights movement from 50 years ago, when gender and sexuality was heavily discriminated.

The 200 visual artworks will be displayed on the entire second floor of the museum, featuring seven sections: (1)Coming Out (2)Sexual Outlaws (3)The Uses of the Erotic (4)Gender and Body (5)Things are Queer (6) AIDS (7) Activism.

The Stonewall Riots–which the exhibit is named after– began on the morning of June 28, 1969, when New York police officers raided the Stonewall Inn that was located in Greenwich Village.

During the 1960s, it was illegal to serve openly gay people alcohol. Therefore, gay bars were regularly raided.

Confrontation between the police and people within the bars were pushed out in the streets after people refused to be arrested quietly, which sparked anger, raids and protests.

LGBTQ members from Greenwich Village joined growing protests and violent clashes for days, which led to the birth of the Stonewall Riots and the art pieces that were inspired by it.

The After after Stonewall is organized by the Columbus Museum and curated by Jonathan Weinberg, Tyler Cann and Drew Sawyer.

The exhibit will be open from Saturday, Sept. 14, 2019 to Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020. Admission is free.