Photo Credit: By Kim Bach (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
The Milwaukee Art Museum's excellent new exhibition Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair is inspiring more than just beauty. It has also provided an impetus to consider the influence of various marginalized communities in the world of high fashion.
On March 12, Jonathan D. Katz will deliver a lecture entitled “A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk” on the influence of the LGBT community on the fashion industry. Katz is an associate professor of visual studies at the University at Buffalo and the founder of the Harvey Milk Institute, the largest queer studies institute in the world.
Katz’s research concerns the relationship between art history and queer history. In particular, Katz specializes in the art that emerged during the Cold War, which is an especially rich era since during those deeply homophobic years the American avant-garde came to be dominated and defined by queer artists.
“A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk” takes place in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Lubar Auditorium on Thursday, March 12 at 6:15 p.m. The lecture is free with museum admission.
