Author Talk: Fire Island Art and The Wonderful World That Almost Was

How have queer artists turned Fire Island into both refuge and revolution? The recently published Fire Island Art: 100 Years, edited by John Dempsey, is the first comprehensive survey of art-making on Fire Island over the last century, assembling extensive never-before published archival materials, essays and interviews with artists and scholars.

In the newly released The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, written by Andrew Durbin, we follow the intertwined stories and work of Paul Thek and Peter Hujar, who spent an extensive amount of time on Fire Island, unraveling how the two boundary burning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists and their decades long entanglement in artmaking, sex, love, competition, and reconciliation came to redefine queer art.

Join us for a dialogue with artist Pamela Sneed, Andrew Durbin, moderated by John Dempsey, taking place within the context of Pamela Sneed and Carlos Martiel’s Sacred and Profane, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art’s current exhibition on view in partnership with BOFFO. Together, they excavate occluded queer histories, reflect on the conditions of making art on Fire Island, and consider how queer communities have fostered artistic innovation and transformed American art over the past century from the shoreline. Books will be available for purchase.

About Fire Island Art: 100 Years
The first book to survey the rich history of art on Fire Island – a beloved destination and cultural haven for queer individuals from around the world

For nearly one hundred years, Fire Island has served as a haven for queer individuals from around the world. Ninety minutes away from New York City, the slender barrier island has been a source of creative innovation for its residents and visitors, which include some of the most influential artists of the past century.

This book – the first of its kind – presents an art history of Fire Island, surveying the rich tapestry of visual artworks in all mediums created there since the 1930s. The story is told in fifteen chapters, each written by a leading art writer and centering on a group of friends and collaborators who drew inspiration from one another and the unique setting of the island at each juncture in its history.

Richly illustrated, the book includes the work of historic artists including Paul Cadmus, David Hockney, Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe, Paul Thek, and Andy Warhol; and also chronicles the explosion of art-making on the island over the past fifteen years, with works by contemporary artists such as TM Davy, Nicole Eisenman, Lola Flash, K8 Hardy, Lyle Ashton Harris, Doron Langberg, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Salman Toor.

Assembled with extensive archival materials – many newly unearthed and never-before published – by editor John Dempsey, the book includes essays by Sam Ashby, AA Bronson, Michael Bullock, Fabio Cherstich, Marc Christensen, Andrew Durbin, Jarrett Earnest, Philip Gefter, Carl Little, Richard Meyer, Jack Parlett, and Ksenia M. Soboleva; alongside interviews with artists Lola Flash, Pamela Sneed, and Wolfgang Tillmans.

About The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek
When Paul Thek met Peter Hujar in the winter of 1956 in Coral Gables, Florida, a slow-simmering connection began to burn. Thek, twenty-three and living in Miami, was handsome and itching to make it as a painter; in the twenty-two-year-old Hujar, a shy, sensual photographer, he’d found a kindred spirit. By 1960, they were dating and living in New York, beginning decades of sex, love, competition, and reconciliation—an entanglement that changed American art forever.

Surrounded by a robust creative scene populated by Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, and David Wojnarowicz, Thek and Hujar’s profoundly influential careers, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, differed as much as the men themselves. The unpredictable and often overlooked Thek crafted visceral installations and sculptures, while Hujar, celebrated and sociable, took penetrating portraits of his world, queer and otherwise. Yet even at their most estranged, and even after their deaths from AIDS, both men were united by a pursuit of liberation—from artistic and sexual limits, from anything short of changing the world.

Andrew Durbin’s The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundaryburning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbin’s book is an ode to a lost but still-living world—and two men who defined it.

About BOFFO
BOFFO is a nonprofit organization that presents innovative and experimental art and design. Their initiatives include artist residencies, digital commissions, and the creation of spaces, experiences and exhibitions. Since 2009 they’ve served the artistic community by supporting new work and stimulating interdisciplinary dialogues. They serve local communities by offering access to voices of all media, generations, and practices in unexpected and unconventional ways.

Accessibility
Chairs with backs will be available. Located at 26 Wooster Street, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art strives to provide a welcoming environment to all visitors. Five external steps lead to our entrance doors: a wheelchair lift is available. All galleries are wheelchair-accessible, and a single-occupancy accessible restroom is located behind the visitor services desk: all restrooms are gender-neutral. Large print didactics are available.

For questions or access requests, please email info@leslielohman.org with 1 week advance of your visit.