Center Blog

Guest Post by Donald Conrad

On Tuesday, February 7, we had the delightful opportunity to listen to Joshua David and Robert Hammond, co-founders of Friends of the High Line, share their extraordinary journey with us.  I say extraordinary because what they have accomplished over the last 13 years could be described as a Herculean.  Their endurance and tenacity has given the city one of the most unique park settings found in the world – the park in the sky.

Photo by Lester Echem

Had some very powerful forces succeeded, the High Line would have been obliterated from the landscape from our great city and future generations would not even remember that it had existed.  A perfect storm of influences including businesses, landowners and political figures converged to eliminate the High Line.  In fact, most people do not realize just how close we came to losing this park.  Mayor Giuliani had actually signed the demolition order to have it razed and only because David and Hammond filed a legal challenge was that order stayed.

Joshua David and Robert Hammond, Co-Founders, The High Line; Photo by Lester Echem

We must remember, however, that at that time the High Line was nothing like it is today.  It was illegal to even step foot on the abandoned elevated railway.  Fenced off and overgrown with wild brush, many city elders and landowners were pressing for something to be done with it and, unfortunately, eliminating it was favored over all other suggestions.  Enter David and Hammond.

Photo by Lester Echem

A community board meeting was scheduled in 1999 to discuss the future of the High Line.  David and Hammond, who did not know each other, had read a recent New York Times article about the line and it sparked their interest to attend the meeting.  Hammond remembers thinking that David “looked cute” and introduced himself at the end of the meeting.  Within months this relationship produced the organization known as Friends of the High Line.  Their new book, High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky, tells the rest of the history, but a history that is not yet finished.

David and Hammond are delightful individuals whose genuine passion for the High Line is quite evident as they discuss their project.  Although both are referred to as partners on the project, they are not a couple.  The two exhibited a lighthearted and comedic tone as they presented their work.  At one point Hammond put up a photograph of himself standing on the High Line and then, without the slightest hesitation, explained the photo by saying, “This has nothing to do with the presentation.  I just thought I looked hot in this photo,” to the laughter of the crowd.  The two kept the standing-room-only crowd smiling and laughing throughout their hour-long presentation.

Their presentation focused entirely on the LGBT influences that shaped the design of the park.  LGBT individuals throughout the community were involved in the planning of the park and more importantly were active participants in Friends of the High Line.  David and Hammond readily admit that without this support, the High Line would be vastly different from what it is today.  In fact, LGBT individuals in the community suggested many of the elements that make the park unique.

As David described the design meetings held with the architectural firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (the firm that is designing the new business district for Fire Island), you couldn’t help but envision something out of a comedy sketch.  The Friends of the High Line board would make requests for various park elements and the designers would respond with the feasibility and cost.  One such element was the glass wall of the toilets that allowed visitors outside the toilet to see hazy or cloudy images of people inside facilities.  To this, a very pro-LGBT designer responded with that very politically incorrect phrase, “That’s so gay,” though it was meant only in lighthearted jest.  He began to use the phrase in subsequent meetings and it became an ongoing joke.  Then the board asked for something no other park in the world uses, dimmer switches for the outdoor lighting, and the designer responded with, “Now that’s really gay.”  Again the audience howled with laughter.  But, think about it, who else other than an LGBT individual would think of adjustable mood lighting for a park?

Overall, the time spent listening to David and Hammond was time very well spent.  The High Line will become a treasured part of the city and we can be proud that it grew from and flourishes because of the deep roots in the LGBT community that sustain it. We owe these gentlemen a debt of sincere thanks for their efforts.

However, the work is not finished.  The third and final segment of the High Line must still be developed.  This segment will take the High Line right down along the Hudson River.  At present we can only imagine the breath-taking vistas that it will provide.  David and Hammond ask that everyone participate in finishing and maintaining the park by joining Friends of the High Line. 

For more information, please visit www.thehighline.org where you can also purchase David and Hammond’s new book, High Line, The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky.  Remember, purchasing the book through their website will ensure that all proceeds from the sale go directly to Friends of the High Line.

Guest Post by Donald Conrad

The Center hosted the Fire Island Share-a-Thon, the long-running annual meet-and-greet for those looking to nab a summer beach house share on the island..  Over twenty agents were on hand offering great properties, including a major real estate company offering a range of properties on the island.  By 7pm the room was packed with enthusiastic people hoping to secure their ticket out of the city this summer.

As many know, fire destroyed several businesses last November, including the Pavilion, the island’s premier nightclub.  Just this month, property owners selected the architectural firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, whose recent high-profile commissions include the High Line and the redesign of Lincoln Center, to rebuild with an ambitious set of plans.  However, since construction cannot be completed until the 2013 season, they also announced that a temporary nightclub would be built for this season.

So how does this affect property rental for this season?  Most of the agents indicated that the fire would actually have little, if any, effect.  In fact, even with the economy, many agents said that they were ahead of last year in filling up vacancies.

And, what will the loss of so much of the business district have on the vacationing experience?  One agent offered the following assessment, “No matter what the circumstances, the boys will always party!”  Another said he has already heard of many house parties in the planning stages and that this season could actually be unique because house parties usually make it easier to get to know others on the island.

There was a range of offerings available to suit almost anyone’s needs and bank account.  So congratulations to those who locked down a deal – and for those who haven’t, don’t miss the next Share-a-Thon on Thursday, February 23^rd.

Guest Post By Jeff Adams

When I signed up to blog the Center’s January Second Tuesday Lecture Series featuring author Michael Schiavi disusing Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo, I knew two things about Russo. First, the Center’s library was co-named after him. Second, he wrote the book The Celluloid Closet, which I had read portions of and had seen the film.

What I did not know was that he also co-founded Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) as well as ACT-UP. He was a constant, and key, fighter for the gay community from shortly after Stonewall until is death in 1990. The Celluloid Closet was a sizeable part of his activism as he documented the effect of the horrible way Hollywood portrayed gays was having on the gay community.

Schiavi’s biography looks at Russo’s life from his days growing up in East Harlem through his years researching and giving Celluloid Closet lectures and into the era of AIDS and his death.

Schiavi said that Russo was very out of place in East Harlem since he was “very intelligent, very articulate, often effeminate and shy. He suffered a lot at the hands of bullies.” It’s no surprise with that going on that he escaped into movies.

“There is no bigger film queen in history than Vito Russo,” said Schiavi.

Russo spent high school and college in New Jersey, but he escaped back to NYC as soon as he could after his graduation in 1968. The following year he witnessed the Stonewall Riots from a spot above the confrontation, in a tree. Schiavi said that violence scared Russo, but he wanted to see what was happening since gay people fighting back was unheard of at the time.

It was another incident, the raid on The Snake Pit, a West Village gay bar, on March 8, 1970, that brought Russo fully into activism. He joined up with the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) after talking with a GAA member at a vigil for a young man who was impaled on a fence trying to escape from a police station.

According to Schiavi, Russo loved the GAA because it was loud and theatrical, staging “zaps,” demonstrations that targeted homophobes. While at GAA, Russo created both a Cabaret Night, where singers could sing love songs to their own gender, and Film Night.

Film night showed mainstream movies, as well as gay cinema. Russo thought he could make movie night into a lecture tour discussing how Hollywood treated gay characters. The Celluloid Closet was born as a twenty-minute lecture he gave to college groups. He knew he needed more material than that though. The twenty minutes grew to more than three hours by the time of his death in 1990.

“Vito would see a film and know why his life on the street was hell because of how the gay characters were portrayed,” said Schiavi.

From the lectures, the first edition of the book was published in 1981. Between 1973 and 1981 he was all over the world giving the lecture. There was such a demand that the book went to a second printing. However, the book quickly became dated as the first news story about AIDS broke the same week The Celluloid Closet was released.

In the wake of AIDS, Russo watched gay portrayal at the moves deteriorate further, especially in teen movies which became increasingly homophobic. He pointed to an almost mandatory use of the word “faggot” that taught teens that it was okay to use that language and to hate.

In the wake of how society was reacting to AIDS, as well as his own diagnosis, Russo took on three projects. He co-founded GLAAD to battle how gays were represented in the media. He revised The Celluloid Closet to discuss how movies portrayed AIDS (that edition was released in 1987). Also in ’87 he joined with Larry Kramer and others in the formation of ACT UP.

For Russo, GLAAD was a way for all instances of homophobia in the media to be met with a loud response. Meanwhile, ACT UP was a way to get laws changed. According to Schiavi, Russo gave one of the most, if not the most, famous of the ACT UP speeches in October 1988 at the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration in Washington, DC.

Words from that speech still resound today: “Someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. Remember that. And when that day comes — when that day has come and gone, there’ll be people alive on this earth — gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives, so that other people might live and be free.”

Schiavi showed a clip of Russo giving the FDA speech. It was emotional for some audience members as there were some of Russo’s friends, people who had worked with him at various organizations, and some who had heard him speak. It shows the impact Russo’s words and actions carry more than 20 years later.

Guest Post by Richard Allen

Though you may not be immediately familiar with the name Jonathan David Katz, you might be aware of the flap surrounding he and his co-curators, David C. Ward and Jenn Sichel last year. They originally organized HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.

Jonathan David Katz

The exhibit sought to show the gay presence, both as subject and creator, in American art in the last century, and was intentionally as un-sensationalistic as it could be. (In fact, apart from two or three exceptions, Katz and his colleagues chose to only show nudes by straight artists, and only showed portraits by gay artists that were clothed, and at most obliquely sexual.) One piece, however, a short video by the artist David Wojnarowicz called “A Fire in My Belly,” was removed without the curators’ prior knowledge or consent, due to content that some, including Speaker of the House John Boehner, saw as anti-Christian.  

The content is a brief shot of ants crawling over a crucifix, within a slightly longer scene of ants crawling over other objects as well.  The 1987 short film is meant to allegorize the artist’s feelings about his own looming death from AIDS. (He died in 1992.) The video is uncontroversial, as is the majority of the work in the exhibit (who knew there were so many Robert Mapplethorpe photographs that didn’t contain nudity?), to the extent that one gets the impression that protesters and critics were looking for anything that they deemed scandalous or inappropriate, and that they were clutching at straws to condemn something, anything about the show, because none of the more obviously homoerotic imagery, which was the true target, was particularly shocking or objectionable.

At the Center’s most recent Second Tuesday Lecture Series on November 15th, Katz avoided focusing on that aspect of the exhibit, which opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in November; he instead highlighted the curatorial process of the exhibit, and discussed the gay shadow history that lay just past the surface of the twentieth century.  

Katz is currently the director of the graduate program in visual culture studies at SUNY Buffalo, and the depth of his knowledge coupled with his engaging and unpretentious speaking style quickly won over a room that was initially more interested in the mediagenic side of the exhibit.

He began his lecture with a painting by Thomas Eakins called Salutat from 1898, depicting a young, muscular prize fighter on display for a shadowy audience.  The body is not presented only as the winner of a contest, but also as an object for delectation, both for the viewers in the painting, and outside.  Eakins, however, was straight, and this first image laid the groundwork for one of Katz’s main themes in the lecture: that prior to the Lavender Menace of the 1950s, co-witch hunt of the Red Menace, being gay, nebulous concept though that was, was frequently treated with a casual awareness, and even winking tolerance, by the larger, heterosexual culture.  

He went on to show several images of public bathing in World War I-era New York by George Bellows, also straight, that had figures that we moderns clearly peg as “gay”, and Katz hastened to assure us that the original audience of these pictures would also have understood what was being depicted, in a neutral, documentary fashion.  

Katz continued on with his selective overview of the 105 works in the show, cycling through gay touchstones like Paul Cadmus and the wealthy lesbian ex-pat scene in Paris, but also teasing out the overtones of same-sex attraction and gay identity in the works of artists like Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.  His characterization of the works of Johns and Rauschenberg during their relationship as a sort of lovers’ conversation was particularly poignant, and he convincingly argued that the mainstream art history community’s willful white-washing of this relationship not only robs gay culture of two major figures, but also ignores an entire set of clues for analyzing their output.

The final image Katz showed, and the final image in the exhibit, was of an enormous, wall-engulfing (84×168 inches) photograph by A.A. Bronson called Felix, June 5, 1994.  It shows the artist’s partner in bed, shortly after dying from AIDS, so emaciated that he looks barely human, his skin so drawn across his skeletal face that his eyes could not be closed after his death; there simply was no longer the excess flesh for eyelids.  The photograph is harrowing and brutal, and dares the viewer to look away, or to keep looking; both options are excruciating.  Its placement seems to say that this is where a hundred years of art and history and politics and disease have led to, and that the true scandal of this exhibit is not some ants crawling on a crucifix for a few seconds, but instead the photographic proof of the social and political indifference that led AIDS to ravage a community and a decade.

HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture runs through February 12, 2012 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Guest Post by Otto Coca

On Monday, December 5, the Center hosted a very special holiday event. It was the Broadway Sings for Pride Winter Concert; an evening filled with fabulous music and performances with the emphasis on pride and holiday cheer. Hosted by the irrepressible Marissa Rosen, star of My Big Gay Italian Wedding and the dashing Raphael Miranda, NBC New York’s weekend meteorologist, the evening was an important fundraiser for the Center and a major success.

Before the doors opened, guests enjoyed cocktails in the reception area and browsed a Broadway-themed silent auction featuring signed playbills and window cards from top shows.

Inside, the set may have been minimal, but green and red projections kept the stage animated as the evening’s talent performed songs befitting the season in addition to songs that spoke to the theme of pride and love.

The third floor auditorium was packed as Raphael Miranda and Russell Fischer of Broadway’s Jersey Boys performed a charming Winter Medley while ‘snowclouds’ danced and sang around them. While Miranda played the strong silent type, Fischer, with his full, soulful voice, filled the room and got the evening off to a great start.

With such a full line-up, acts took to the stage in rapid succession and had time for only one or two songs before turning the stage over to the next eager performer. The performers camaraderie and enthusiasm was infectious and the audience greeted each act with huge rounds of applause.

Some highlights were Adam Pascal, the Tony-nominated star of Rent and other Broadway shows; Terri White spent her evening off from Follies to be part of the festivities; singer-songwriter Emily Kinney of Spring Awakening gave the crowd a dose of adorable with quirky selections from her recent album, Blue Toothbrush.

Lesser known performers gave their all: Katie Thompson and her ‘tween guest vocalist, Julia Riglioso, had the audience in hysterics with their I like Christmas for the Food and Amy Toporek raised the roof with her amazing voice and natural stage presence. Each of the evening’s performances earned the audience’s praise, not only from talent but also for simply being part of this wonderful evening.

Today is World AIDS Day, a time for the global community to remember those we’ve lost, contemplate ways to better help people living with HIV, and promote solutions to prevent the spread of this disease. This year marks 30 years since the first AIDS case was reported in the U.S.

Since our founding in 1983, the Center has been fully committed to providing HIV and AIDS services to our community, which has been profoundly affected by the AIDS epidemic. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers with HIV or AIDS have benefited from our help. Each year The Center provides more than 1,800 counseling and group sessions to people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS. More than 1,000 LGBT youth and young adults attend HIV prevention activities and leadership training.  Thousands more attend educational forums and conferences.

But our work to end the epidemic is far from over. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, “New York City remains the epicenter of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. More than 107,000 New Yorkers are living with HIV, but thousands more don’t know they’re infected. New York City’s AIDS case rate is almost 3 times the U.S. average, and HIV is the 3rd leading cause of death for New York City residents aged 35 to 54.”

African Americans, gay and bisexual men, transgender people and youth 13-29 continue to experience high and increasing rates of HIV infection in New York City. New York is not alone, since the first AIDS cases were reported, the global AIDS epidemic has become one of the greatest threats to human health and development.

The Center’s for Disease Control released new figures this year showing that ‘despite years of great progress in treating AIDS, the number of new HIV infections has remained stubbornly around 50,000 a year in the United States for a decade.

Today as we reflect on 30 years of HIV/AIDS, we remain optimistic in the knowledge that with continued activism, support, education, prevention programs and community building we can ultimately end this epidemic.

As part of World AIDS Day formerViva Glam Ambassador and M·A·C AIDS Fund spokesperson, Cyndi Lauper will join M.A.C Cosmetics at the Center. Lauper and M·A·C will assemble gift bags, with items donated from the New York Liberty, Contesta Rock Hair and MTV Networks,  for the LGBT Center youth and speak to press on the importance of this day. Lauper is well known for her exceptional voice and endless dedication to raising awareness for HIV/AIDS prevention and care. She recently attended the Center’s Women’s Event 14, introducing her friend and our honoree, out comedienne and activist Wanda Sykes.

The Center will also commemorate World AIDS Day by presenting documentarians Kate Kunath and Sasha Wortzel in conversation with Dennis Parrott and Linda King, owners of the legendary Starlite Lounge.

In 1959, a decade prior to Manhattan’s Stonewall riots, the Starlite Lounge opened in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as a non-discriminatory establishment for gay people of color. A half-century later, the neighborhood and the gay community were shocked when the oldest, Black-owned, LGBT establishment was given notice to vacate and was ultimately forced to close in 2010.

In honor of World AIDS Day, The Center will focus on how the Starlite became a refuge and organizing point in response to the AIDS epidemic. The filmmakers will share key excerpts of their documentary-in-progress, Starlite, and talk with former resident performer Lady Jasmine and long-time patrons about what the Starlite meant to the community, especially in the early days of the epidemic.

Also featured at the event will be the organizers of the AIDS Memorial Park and learning center currently being proposed for the triangle site opposite the former St. Vincent’s Hospital. The proposed location sits in the middle of the neighborhood, the site of significant AIDS epidemic organizing: from the first AIDS ward at St. Vincent’s Hospital to the founding of ACT UP and other advocacy organizations at the Center.

We invite our community to be a part of our World AIDS Day events, help us pay tribute to all those we have lost and work strategically with us throughout the next decade in our continued efforts to end AIDS.

“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.” – Abraham Lincoln

Scott Pasfield’s just released book Gay In America should make a lot of places proud. Pasfield traveled for more than three years, logging more than 54,000 miles, as he chronicled the lives of gay men. One hundred forty portraits appear in the book and each state in the union is represented at least once. Pasfield was at The Center on October 17 as part of the Center Author Series to discuss the creation of the book and share the stories of some of the men featured.

The idea for the book came to Pasfield at a time he was looking for a project to rekindle his passion for photography. “I needed a personal project that would speak from my heart,” he told the audience. “The media has a way of portraying gay men and I knew there was more to us than that.”

To achieve the goal of showing as many variations as possible, he posted ads on Craigslist and other sources in an effort to find men who would tell their stories. He said there was a mating dance that would occur as men would contact him. “There was a trust that happened, gay man to gay man,” he said.

Some of the men profiled in the book where in attendance at The Center: Manny & Brian, from Patterson, NJ whose photo was the alternate cover choice for the book; Chip and Gabriel from New York City; and Lt. Dan Choi, who was the final cover choice for the book.

“He is one of the best advocates out there,” says Pasfield of Choi. “It’s an honor to have him on the cover. He came out in a big way and he hasn’t stopped yet.”

Stories that Pasfield shared during his presentation included:

Steven from Miami, who was so comfortable in his skin as a teenager, that the therapist his parents took him to called him the most well adjusted teen he’d ever met.

David from Snellville, Georgia, wrote about his partner’s children trying to figure out what to call him. Since he stayed home with the kids, they settled on “mommy with a beard” as his name.

Henry, Scott and Henry’s son Cameron from Minneapolis, provide one of the sadder stories of the book. Henry is a cancer survivor and Cameron had brain cancer. Their photo shoot was postponed because Henry and Scott were scheduled to be married on a cruise, and Cameron very much wanted to be at the wedding. Two weeks later, the shoot took place and Cameron was so weak, Henry and Scott kept Cameron upright between them. Cameron passed away five weeks later and, a few months after that, Henry and Scott broke up. Pasfield convinced Henry to keep the story and image in the book because Cameron had felt so strongly about the project. It’s also a story that shows that gay families can go through the very same tragedies that everyone else does. This is also the only story that was allowed to be updated in the book; everything else is frozen as a moment in time just as the photographs are.

Jakoury from Chester, West Virginia, was encouraged by his father to learn how to defend himself. In 10th grade that came in handy when he was bullied and preceded to knock the bully out. He ended up gaining respect and starting a gay/straight alliance in the school.

Pasfield says he became an accidental activist because of the book. “If more people took their passion and used it to better their community, the world would change. We all have to do what we can.”

There is some controversy since the book focuses only on men, but Pasfield points out there is no word that signifies “gay men” as there is for lesbians. He hopes someone does a book on lesbians (he’s considered it himself but he’s not sure he could do the topic justice), transgender people and bisexual people. He firmly believes, “to study each group individually gives them the attention they deserve.”

Meanwhile, he hopes the attention focused on Gay in America can secure funding to allow him to do further volumes since there are so many diverse stories across the country.

You can find out more about Gay in America, and see the video Pasfield showed at the start of his discussion, at gayinamerica.us.

By Jeff Adams

Guest Post by Otto Coca

Frank Bruni joined the Center’s venerable Second Tuesday lecture series recently for an event that was ostensibly about his best-selling memoir Born Round, but Bruni’s fame as a food critic and as the first openly gay op-ed contributor to the New York Times dominated much of the lively discussion. 

With the room at capacity, event coordinator Howard Williams introduced Mr. Bruni with an anecdote about having read his writing when they both lived in Detroit and Mr. Bruni worked for the Detroit Free Press. “I thought Frank might be gay when he reviewed a restaurant of questionable merit by saying ‘Where only the salad is well dressed.’” To laughter and high-spirits, Frank Bruni took to the podium and announced that this wouldn’t be a lecture, per se, but that he would prefer to simply take questions and the audience was ready and eager to comply.

“What is this preoccupation with food? I don’t get it!” was the very first question to Mr. Bruni as the audience let out an embarrassed gasp. Mr. Bruni seemed as amused and surprised as the ‘foodies’ in the audience. “Some say food is the new theatre, but I think it’s really the new porn,” he quipped and many clearly agreed with him. For a writer who has published an acclaimed book about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, 1993 with Elinor Burkett; and published his experiences following George W. Bush on the campaign trail in Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush, 2002, it was clear that this audience saw him as a ‘Food Icon’ and Mr. Bruni obliged.

 “Did you wear disguises?” kicked off a lively discussion as many in the audience revealed themselves to be restaurant professionals and advanced home chefs. “I’ve worked in food service for over 20 years. How do you feel about writing and commenting on someone’s creativity?” For this Mr. Bruni became very serious and explained that he believed his main responsibility was to the customer for whom a fine-dining experience could run hundreds of dollars. “The chef or restaurateur has all the support and encouragement, but the diner goes in alone. I don’t try to insult anyone’s creativity but I do need to keep the patron first in mind.”

It was 45-minutes into the lecture when the conversation turned briefly to politics. Someone with a long memory for New York City social issues asked, “When do you think the homophobic nature of the New York Times changed?” This was a challenging question for Mr. Bruni, now a respected voice at the Times. Mr. Bruni thought that AIDS effectively brought about the change and talked of a beloved journalist at the Times who had died and whose passing forced a re-consideration of the way the Times addressed gay issues. While the questioner did not seem to completely agree, and the ensuing conversation was simply too nuanced and thoughtful to paraphrase, it was illuminating for all present to listen to two individuals with relevant points of view amicably agreeing to disagree on the issue of the Times’ LGBT sensitivity.

Before the evening was finished we did learn some important facts: the lamb burger at The Breslin comes highly recommended; he has tried disguises, twice, and it wasn’t worth the effort and finally, that Mr. Bruni is indeed ‘taken’ with a boyfriend in kidney research with whom he seems very fond.  A very enjoyable evening , and as the crowd exited down the stairs, one young man holding a paperback of Born Round said to a friend, “I wanted to talk more about the book!” But he did not seem at all disappointed.

A unique art exhibit that was on display at the Center during February and March of 2010, is now the subject of a documentary by filmmaker Bruce Donelly. Comfort of Men is inspired by a collection of paintings by New York-based artist, Branden Wallace.

The collection is made up of portraits, featuring fathers and sons, brothers, friends and boyfriends, which explore the issues surrounding masculinity, male expression and intimacy within each of these relationships.

The film features interviews with the artist, a number of the portrait subjects, as well as a host of other artists, writers, critics and art professors. It also includes insights from the Center’s Director of Meeting & Conference Services and Capital Projects, Robert A. Woodworth, who has been with the Center since it’s beginning in 1983. Woodworth is featured in one of the portraits.

Please consider checking out and supporting this important film. Click here for more information.

Post by Kaden Freeman, Center Communications Intern

TJ Sengel Photography

On Sunday, July 24, love was in the air as newlywed same-sex couples from across the city arrived at the Center to celebrate their weddings at our community reception. In total, 350 people attended, including couples and their guests; the event featured dancing, drinks, cake, and joyful spirits.

TJ Sengel Photography

Guests cheered for couples as they entered the room, and some gave toasts as music and laughter filled the Center’s halls. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn gave a moving speech, and State Senator Tom Duane, who helped push the Marriage Equality Act through the State Senate, greeted the enthusiastic crowd.

TJ Sengel Photography

The Event was co-sponsored by Freedom to Marry, the Human Rights Campaign, Empire State Pride Agenda and the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund.

TJ Sengel Photography

LGBT activist Lt. Dan Choi also made a visit to the reception, as did actor George Takei and his husband Brad Altman.

TJ Sengel Photography

Thanks to generous donations from local businesses and individuals in the community, the event was free to all who attended. Huge thank you to Park Avenue Catering, A New York Gay Wedding.com, Sugar Couture, Buttercup Bake Shop, Butter Lane Cupcakes, Levy Lighting NYC, Wily Jack, Rokk Vodka, The Foundry, Mark Rose, Ice Sculpture Designs, Ben & Jerrys Ice Cream, Dirty Sugar Live, TJ Sengel Photography and DJ Ted Snowdon!!

TJ Sengel Photography

The Center would like to congratulate all newlywed same sex couples, and wish everyone the best during this momumental time in our movement for equality. Your can view more photos here.