Richard Cortez will be crooning Queer folk songs this weekend at Club Cumming. (photo by Cole Whitter)
Looking for gay things to do in New York? Whether you’re looking for drag shows, parties talks & lectures, film screenings, theater, or cultural outings, Metrosource has got you covered. Our complete list of LGBT things to do is just a click away, but here are a few handpicked favorite queer events:
This week, take one final lap around the Yellow Brick Road as Elton John retires from touring; relive the legends of yesteryear with TV talk show legend Dick Cavett, or enjoy all the eye candy at the fourth annual installment of the New York Queer Zine Fair!
The NY Queer Zine Fair 2018
Saturday, October 13 and Sunday, October 14
Manhattan’s LGBTQ Community Center welcomes the fourth edition of The New York Queer Zine Fair, October 12-14. This year’s event will bring more than 55 queer artists, zine makers, collectors and publishers from around the world to present and sell their most current work.
Queer Folk
Saturday, October 13
Club Cumming welcomes back vocalist Richard Cortez with guitarist Alex Mejia along with the artist Tenderfoot, Corey Ryan Matos & The Royale Minks for an evening of queer folk music.
The Q Awards
Monday, October 15
The Q Awards, which recognizes LGBTQ advocates and trailblazers, is hosting a benefit for LGBTQ youth at 639 Washington Street (that’s between Barrow and Christopher Streets). This year’s event honors actress and author Kate Bernstein along with National LGBT Chamber of Commerce founders Justin G. Nelson and Chance E. Mitchell.
“Hollywood Heyday” – in Discussion with Dick Cavett
Monday, October 15
Join the co-authors of the new book, Hollywood Heyday: 75 Candid Interviews with Golden Age Legends, David Fantle & Tom Johnson in a revealing conversation with legendary talk show host Dick Cavett. The three will tell of their personal encounters with such legends as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Lucille Ball and dozens more.
All Used Up: Dismantling the Gaze x Queering the Collection
Wednesday, October 17
This program builds on The International Center of Photography’s series Dismantling the Gaze, which considers looking, power and visual culture in the #MeToo movement, and Queering the Collection, which presents work of and outside ICP’s Collections to expand the voices of queer artists. All Used Up brings together the appropriation practices of William E. Jones, Allison Parrish, and Christopher Clary, with special guest shawné michaelain holloway, for a night of screenings, readings, and performances. Followed by a panel discussion with the artists and moderator Nayland Blake.
Elton John: Farewell Yellow Brick Road
Thursday, October 18
The Bitch is Back one last time as Sir Elton John takes his fans on a musical and highly visual journey spanning his 50-year career with the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour stopping at Madison Square Garden. The tour stops at Madison Square Garden for four shows, including October 19 as well as November 8 and 9.
Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection
Ongoing
Featuring more than 100 works from our collection, Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection explores a wide range of art making that focuses on enduring political subjects — encompassing gender, race and class —that remain relevant today. The exhibition’s intersectional feminist framework highlights artworks in a plurality of voices that aim to rally support or motivate action on behalf of a cause, or to combat stereotypes and dominant narratives.
Half the Picture draws its title from a 1989 Guerrilla Girls poster that declares, “You’re seeing less than half the picture without the vision of women artists and artists of color.” Spanning almost one hundred years, the exhibition focuses on historical and contemporary work by more than fifty artists who combine message and medium to engage with political and social issues. Often radical and inspiring, these artists advocate for their communities, their beliefs, and their hopes for equality amid popular or state-supported opposition.
The exhibition showcases pointed artworks by Vito Acconci, Beverly Buchanan, Sue Coe, Renee Cox, Nona Faustine, Harmony Hammond, the Guerrilla Girls, Käthe Kollwitz, An-My Lê, Yolanda López, Park McArthur, Zanele Muholi, Philip Pearlstein, Wendy Red Star, Joan Semmel, Dread Scott, Nancy Spero, Betty Tompkins, Andy Warhol, the Artists’ Poster Committee of Art Workers Coalition and Taller de Gráfica Popular, among many others.
Donna Gottschalk: Brave, Beautiful Outlaws
Ongoing
This exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art features the work of Donna Gottschalk, a photographer active in the early period of radical lesbian organizing in New York and California during the 1970s. Gottschalk came out as a lesbian right at the formation of the radical lesbians and Furies collectives on the east coast, where she met lesbian artists JEB (Joan E. Biren), Flavia Rando and others, then later moved to California to join lesbian-separatist communities. In both locations, Gottschalk photographed herself, friends, lovers and activists in radical lesbian communities. Gottschalk also documented the life of her sibling, formerly a gay man named Alfie who transitioned to become a woman named Myla.
Straight White Men
Ongoing
Christmas Eve is typically a time to be merry — but what happens when Ed and his three adult sons are forced to confront their true identities in Straight White Men? Even matching pajamas can’t hide the fact that these men are the makers of their own destinies. Armie Hammer (Call Me By Your Name, The Social Network) stars alongside TV Star Tom Skerritt (M.A.S.H., Picket Fences) in this groundbreaking work by Young Jean Lee, the first Asian-American female playwright to be produced on Broadway.
The Donna Summer Musical
Ongoing
Where were you the first time you heard “I Feel Love?” In the world of Hot 100 radio, that track cut through everything around it — the arena rock of Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen, the disco of the Commodores and Jacksons — all of it. For those who were there, it sounded like a transmission from another galaxy.
But Donna Summer began her career in the musical “Hair,” becoming best known for refusing to take off her clothes in the show’s much-ballyhooed nude scene. She was a girl from Boston with a voice from heaven, who shot through the stars from gospel choir to dance floor diva. But what the world didn’t know was how Donna Summer risked it all to break through barriers, becoming one of the signature voices of an era and the inspiration for many who followed in her path.
Tony Award winner LaChanze (The Color Purple), Ariana DeBose (Hamilton, A Bronx Tale) and newcomer Storm Lever play the many facets of Donna Summer, taking audiences through her tumultuous life, tempestuous loves and mega-watt musical hits. From “Love to Love You, Baby” to “Last Dance” and beyond, her story and her music pair for a night of memories — or discovery. It’s The Donna Summer Musical.
Head Over Heels
Ongoing
Variety‘s review of the show when it was in San Francisco says Head Over Heels could have been called “A Very LGBT Thing Happened on the Way to the Masque” (masque as in 17th century court performance, and Masque as in the Hollywood punk club where the Go-Go’s learned their chops — take your pick). That’s one juxtaposition that’s really anything but odd, since the Go-Go’s and Carlisle have ended up amassing a huge gay fan base over their decades of breaking up and reuniting. The plot of “Head Over Heels” really gets underway well into the first act, when the lowly shepherd Musidorus (Andrew Durand), banished by the king from pursuing the princess Philoclea (Alexandra Socha), cross-dresses as an Amazonian warrior to get quality time with his unsuspecting sweetheart. It’s a setup right out of “Some Like It Hot” or “Tootsie,” if not time immemorial, but imagine a “Some Like It Hot” that just gets less and less straight until it ends with a succession of same-sex marriages.”
Head Over Heels is directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) with musical arrangement by Pulitzer Prize and Tony winner Tom Kitt (Next To Normal, American Idiot) and choreography by Emmy Award nominee Spencer Liff (So You Think You Can Dance, Hedwig and the Angry Inch). With a wickedly funny original book by Tony winner Jeff Whitty (Bring It On: The Musical, Avenue Q) adapted by James Magruder (Triumph of Love), this new production also includes scenic and puppet design by Tony Award nominee Julian Crouch (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), costume design by Academy Award and Tony Award nominee Arianne Phillips (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), lighting design by four-time Tony Award winner Kevin Adams (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, American Idiot, Spring Awakening), sound design by Tony Award nominee Kai Harada (Follies), and projection design by Andrew Lazarow.
The World Premiere of a New Play, Scissoring
Ongoing
In Christina Quintana’s Scissoring, New Orleans native and resident Abigail Bauer must confront the clash between the life she has created with her longterm girlfriend and her career as a devoted teacher in a repressive Catholic school. Through her struggle, Abigail receives pressure from the school’s shape-shifting, personified public address system and guidance from the figures of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s devoted friend and lover, Lorena Hickok. Performances will begin May 31st for a limited Off-Broadway engagement through June 30th. Opening Night is set for June 11th.
OBSESSION: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele and Picasso
Ongoing
This exhibition at The Met Breuer will present a selection of some fifty works from The Met’s Scofield Thayer Collection—a collection that is best known for paintings by artists of the school of Paris, and a brilliant group of erotic and evocative watercolors, drawings, and prints by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Pablo Picasso, whose subjects, except for a handful, are nudes. The exhibition will be the first time these works have been shown together and will provide a focused look at this important collection; it also marks the centenary of the deaths of Klimt and Schiele.
The Met’s Scofield Thayer Collection specializes in paintings by legendary artists from the school of Paris. For the first time, a selection of key works from greats like Klimt, Schiele and Picasso will offer art enthusiasts a concentrated look at nude works from this important collection. The timing of this erotic and sensual exhibition is also poignant, as it marks 100 years since the passion of both Klimt and Schiele.
An aesthete and scion of a wealthy family, Scofield Thayer (1889–1982) was co-publisher and editor of the literary magazine the Dial from 1919 to 1926. In this avant-garde journal he introduced Americans to the writings of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, and Marcel Proust, among others. He frequently accompanied these writers’ contributions with reproductions of modern art. Thayer assembled his large collection of some six hundred works—mostly works on paper—with staggering speed in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna between 1921 and 1923. While he was a patient of Sigmund Freud in Vienna, he acquired a large group of watercolors and drawings by Schiele and Klimt, artists who at that time were unknown in America.
When a selection from his collection was shown at the Montross Gallery in New York in 1924—five years before the Museum of Modern Art opened—it won acclaim. It found no favor, however, in Thayer’s native city, Worcester, Massachusetts, that same year when it was shown at the Worcester Art Museum. Incensed, Thayer drew up his will in 1925, leaving his collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He withdrew from public life in the late 1920s and lived as a recluse on Martha’s Vineyard and in Florida until his death in 1982.
Looking for more? Check out our complete listing of events.
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Last modified: October 11, 2018
