HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
Photograph | Jonathan David Katz
Hiding In Plain Sight
Say what you will about Hide/Seek, in the post-gay 21st century it still manages to hit a nerve. When it debuted at The Smithsonian in 2011 it had the Catholic League in a twist, and was boycotted by artists after the museum caved to them. Now it's landed at the Brooklyn Museum in a brand new swirl, raising both the hackles of the New York Post for its banned David Wojnarowicz video, and some serious eyebrow in New York's LGBT community for its inexplicable content warning signs. The only thing shocking about the show is how tame the work actually is. What is radical is the discursive frame, "to 'queer' the American canon," in the words of the original co-curator Jonathan David Katz. It stakes a gay claim to these familiar works, though the queerness is so coded it needs explanatory wall texts, often larger than the works themselves. The amazing Warhol Screen Tests need no explanation, however. Neither does A.A. Bronson's Felix, June 5, 1994. And seeing the connection between the Nan Goldin/Peter Hujar photographs and the William Burroughs portrait of Allen Ginsberg is alone worth the trip. But if you can't make it, don't worry. The book will suffice.
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