You're going to be. Hello and welcome to Outward Slate's podcast of exquisite taste in all things LGBT.

I'm Jill Schill Peterson and I'm really excited to bring you kind of an art history episode of the show today.

We're going to dig into an annual LGBT art and history auction that's put on by the

Swan galleries in New York City. It's in its six year and assembles a really interesting

collection of material that covers truly many centuries and that even put certain art and historical items on for you know pretty impressive sale on the high art market.

I think that auction is a really fascinating opportunity to reflect on, you know, what we might call a kind of canonizing process for LGBT art and history, but maybe something even more interested in definitely a little gossipy and kind of

decadent along the way. But you know I have to say I've always felt a certain

imposter syndrome in galleries and museums I think it's probably because I grew up in a very

working-class household. So my first memories of art and history, you know, as

collections were definitely school field trips were a bunch of suburban kids of immigrants like me were you know very much out of place visitors in the what I thought were very big exciting museums and art galleries of the city, well in this case,

Vancouver in Canada. You know, and so I've always kind of had, I wouldn't say a chip on my shoulder,

but I felt, you know, a little self-aware in art spaces. and then when I got a little bit older I guess in college or in grad school I was honestly just very tickled to find out that it seemed like okay basically every second artist was gay or art collector or institutionalist, you know,

and that most of what passes for serious Western art itself seems honestly very gay and I mean that sincerely actually

so I'm kind of fascinated whenever there's an initiative to name and group work together as

specifically LGBT because there's a way in which that kind of seems

redundant sometimes when it comes to to art at least but there's a really

interesting historical dimension to this particular auction and I think that process has a lot to tell us. So stick around

because right after this short break I'll be sitting down to talk with Cori Seront from Swan

galleries about this year's LGBT art and history auction. Hey slate listeners, it's Mary Harris, host of the Daily News podcast, what next?

All this week, we're going to be broadcasting from the hottest show in town.

I'm talking, of course, about the Democratic National Convention.

How excited are you?

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