The Queer Coffee Table: 10 L.G.B.T.Q. Books to Usher In World Pride
The New York Times, May 16, 2019
By Jeremy Allen
It’s a rare and refreshing moment for the queer coffee table book collector (your reporter included): As New York City prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion by hosting World Pride this June, an array of titles celebrating the L.G.B.T.Q. community’s history, art and culture are suddenly on offer. The lineup is impressive, both in its scale — there are more books than the 10 fit to print here — and in its sweep, comprising histories of rights, artworks and lovers gained and lost to time.
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Per its title, the scope of “Art After Stonewall, 1969-1989” (Rizzoli Electa, $60) is relegated to the two seismic decades following the uprising. This particular catalog coincides with an exhibit organized by Ohio’s Columbus Museum of Art, split into two segments for its opening at New York’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art and New York University’s Grey Art Gallery (through July). Helmed by the artist and curator Jonathan Weinberg, the book and exhibition situate the work within seven themes. Among them: “Coming Out” (Peter Hujar’s triumphant photograph for a Gay Liberation Front poster in 1970) and “AIDS and Activism” (Lola Flash’s haunting image “AIDS Quilt,” 1987).