The Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport will host a free Pride Month tour open to the public on Thursday, June 27. The tour will take guests throughout the gallery, telling the stories of queer artists on display.
Sarah Adams is the assistant to the curator, and she is directing the Pride Month tours. She says the Norton’s goal with the tours .
Sarah Adams: Our Pride Month tour, we really just wanted to bring something to the community where everybody in the community can feel included in a space like the Norton, to be able to come here and see artists like themselves, and hear about stories that may be similar to their own, from people from across the globe and across centuries, and hundreds of years. Just the history of that and honoring that history, especially during Pride Month- we just wanted to shine a special spotlight on them.
One of the queer artists in the Norton is Rosa Bonheur, an animalist artist born in 1822 who is known for her breaking of social standards. She didn’t wear dresses, she smoked cigarettes, and had long-term relationships with women. Sarah says artists like Rosa are important to highlight during the tour because people can relate to her.
Sarah Adams: It’s really important to the museum to have anybody come in here and find a piece of art or read something about an artist and find themselves in it. To be able to say, ‘That reminds me of my experience.’ Or, ‘If they can do it, I can do it. If they did it all the way back then when it was extremely hard and dangerous to be yourself.’ Being able to see something that reminds you of yourself, or you feel connected to in some way, I think it’s really important for people to have that so art can continue. So people keep making art, or not even just making it, coming to see it, and feeling more comfortable to come into a space like the Norton. Having these examples of what life was like, how these people, like with Bonheur, saw in her work, basically, is just as good as a photograph, at least in my eyes. Grabbing that moment in time, or grabbing that moment in that artist’s life is just super important to us here at the Norton. Because we want people to come into our space and feel welcome.
Sarah also describes the life of actress Sarah Bernhardt, a bisexual woman also known for her eccentricity. There are many records of Bernhardt’s relationships, which can be uncommon for many historic gay artists.
Sarah Adams: It’s really cool when you have those moments with artists or subjects where you have access to art like that, where you can go, ‘Look this is a painting of them two together.’ Or, ‘Look, here’s a sculpture Sarah made of their hands intertwined.’ It’s so romantic, but it’s also super fortunate to be able to have those things. Because there are a lot of instances where you had gay artists have their identity erased. Either by family or by time. There’s several cases of artists who will write love letters to their significant other, and their family members will find it decades later, and they’ll destroy it, or they’ll rewrite it to where it sounds like they’re writing to somebody else. That’s always so sad to hear. So we’re fortunate enough, not only with Sarah, but other artists on this tour to have access to those information.
Sarah says acknowledging the queer artists at the museum allows other people in the community to see the history of LGBTQ people.
Sarah Adams: Gay people have always existed. And I think that Sarah and Rosa and all the people we talk about on our tour would be so happy to see that people are still talking about them and recognizing either their struggles or celebrating them, and things like that. Just giving them the recognition that they should have deserved back then, And for me to be able to talk to people about it and be like, ‘Hey look, she was important, or he did a fantastic thing for the culture and things like that. So they live on, not just hanging in a Fine Arts museum, but their stories are being told.
This is Alaina Atnip with Red River Radio.