AFAM’s collection features many artists who have experienced disenfranchisement and faced brutal social and economic restrictions. Their artworks often complicate conventional representations of domesticity and protection, even as they materialize a sense of belonging and hold onto the “dream of home.”
For the third installment of our series Both/And, curator Brooke Wyatt invites curator and writer Gemma Rolls-Bentley to present the curatorial framework behind Dreaming of Home, recently on view at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York. This project explores the idea of home beyond its physical space, considering the roles of community, family, spirituality, and the body in creating a safe and comfortable place. Through the works of twenty contemporary queer artists, Rolls-Bentley suggests that building a home is sometimes a hard-won process that requires faith, creativity, and imagination.
Speakers will reflect on themes of self-care, queerness, artistic identity, and world-building, and will engage with artists featured in Somewhere to Roost, including works by Lee Godie, Thornton Dial, Sr., and a selection of hand-tinted vernacular photographs.
About the Both/And series
Inspired by artist and writer Lorraine O’Grady (1934-2024) who uses the concept of “both/and” to think in a non-hierarchical way, the “Both/And” program series explores the breadth and complexities of AFAM’s collection beyond the untrained/skilled, craft/art, and amateur/fine art divides. Speakers approach artists and their objects as agents capable of posing questions to us, the viewers, rather than the other way around.
This program is organized in conjunction with a series of thematic shows drawn from the Museum’s collection that includes Material Witness: Folk and Self-Taught Artists at Work, Marvels of My Own Inventiveness, and Somewhere to Roost, and runs through May 2025. These exhibitions invite viewers to admire the museum’s collection up close while showcasing an expansive history of American art.
About the speakers
Gemma Rolls-Bentley has been at the forefront of contemporary art for almost two decades, working passionately to champion diversity in the field. Her debut book Queer Art; From Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between was published in Spring 2024 by Frances Lincoln and has been highlighted as a must-read by Them, Dazed, Timeout, The Guardian, Cultured and the FT. Her curatorial practice amplifies the work of female and queer artists and provides a platform for art that explores LGBTQIA+ identity. Gemma has curated for a range of international galleries and institutions, most recently Carl Freedman Gallery, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, Somerset House, the Tom of Finland Foundation, London Art Fair and Kkweer Arts. In 2022 she curated the Brighton Beacon Collection, the largest permanent display of queer art in the UK, for Soho House Brighton. Gemma has taught at numerous institutions including the Royal College of Art, the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths. She co-chairs the board of trustees for the charity Queercircle, sits on the Courtauld Association Committee and the Leslie Lohman Museum Acquisitions Committee.
Brooke Wyatt was Luce Assistant Curator at the American Folk Art Museum from 2022-2024, where she envisioned a series of exhibitions drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection. She previously practiced as a clinical therapist in community mental health settings and worked as an art teacher before beginning her PhD in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. Brooke’s doctoral dissertation, “Séraphine Louis and French Self-Taught Art in Transatlantic Modernist Discourse,” explores the material and representational strategies of the French artist Séraphine Louis, foregrounding how histories of gender, class, race, and disability have shaped the reception and exhibition of Louis’s work across Europe and the Americas from the late 1920s to the present day.
Accessibility:
This virtual program is free for all to attend. It will be recorded and shared at a later date on our website, Vimeo and YouTube pages.
All sessions feature closed captioning in English, and live ASL interpretation.
For specific accommodation questions or needs, please contact us at least 10 days prior to the program at publicprograms@folkartmuseum.org.
Support
Somewhere to Roost is generously supported by the Joyce B. Cowin Fund for Exhibitions. Presented in the Daniel Cowin Gallery—originally established by Trustee Joyce B. Cowin in memory of her husband, also a Trustee and champion of the Museum—it includes recently acquired works, including selections from the Audrey B. Heckler collection, and gifts from Joshua Feldstein, Peter J. Cohen, and Will and Mary Evans.
Images
Photographers unidentified, c. 1915-1960, hand-tinted photographs. American Folk Art Museum, New York; gift of Peter J. Cohen.
Registration
Space is limited; advance registration is required. Instructions for joining with a Zoom link and password will be provided by email upon registration confirmation under “Additional Information.”
Please consider making a donation when you register to support ongoing virtual programming.