National Portrait Gallery Denies Accusation It Erased AIDS Context from Renowned Queer Artwork
Mark Mauno
Them'
An op-ed in Out this week accused the Smithsonian Museum's National Portrait Gallery of stripping key context from a famous piece of art by HIV-positive artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres that would situate the work within the AIDS epidemic.
Writing after attending a retrospective of Gonzalez-Torres's work, titled 'Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return,' which is currently on display at the Smithsonian Museum's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., art scholar Ignacio Darnaude claimed that the exhibition failed to include direct mention of the artist's queer identity, HIV-positive status or his work's connection to AIDS — specifically around the museum's installation of one of the artist's most famous works, 'Untitled' (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)'
'Created the year his partner, Ross, died of AIDS, (1991) it features a pile of colorful candy in Ross' exact weight, 175 pounds. The viewer is encouraged to eat the candies, causing the installation to disappear slowly, just like Ross did,' Darnaude wrote in an Instagram post. 'The piece alludes to society's devastation of the gay community during the AIDS era but, as the installation gets constantly replenished by the museums, Torres gives his partner eternal life.'
Darnaude's post, made on the account for his upcoming docuseries Hiding in Plain Sight: Breaking the Queer Code in Art, includes a picture of the placard that accompanies the installation, which simply says, 'Candies in variously colored wrappers, endless supply. Overall dimensions with installation. Ideal weight: 175 lb.' Also, as indicated in the picture Darnaude posted, the candy has been placed in a straight line, rather than put in a pile, as the installation typically is shown.
'The Smithsonian card mentions '175 pounds, ideal body weight,' avoiding the installation's true meaning,' Darnaude wrote. ''Not only that, by choosing to display the candy in a pretty straight line, instead of in a pile that diminishes until it disappears, it destroys Torres's intention. I explained it to Smithsonian's employees, who replied 'Now, the piece makes sense.''
The official page for the exhibition on the National Portrait Gallery's website does not make any mention of Gonzalez-Torres's queerness, HIV-positive status, or connection to the AIDS crisis.
In an email to Them, a Smithsonian spokesperson said that Darnaude's op-ed 'only acknowledges one of two wall labels on view that address the work' and included an official statement from the National Portrait Gallery.
'The focus of the exhibition is to highlight Felix's revolutionary work in portraiture. Across the exhibition and its various locations, we have put his artworks in conversation with portraits from the museum's collection — including portraits of queer figures — to provide further context around the artist's practice,' the statement read. 'In the gallery in which 'Untitled' (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is installed, there is a wall label that includes: 'Gonzalez-Torres cared for his partner Ross Laycock, named in the candy work's title, who died from HIV/AIDS in 1991.''
A photo of that wall placard, sent to Them by a Smithsonian spokesperson, ties 'Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.),' to two other works in the room, including another installation involving candy by Gonzalez-Torres subtitled 'Leaves of Grass,' and a portrait of Walt Whitman, the queer poet who wrote the book of the same name.
'We reunited them as a way to consider the nineteenth-century poet as a queer ancestor of the twentieth-century artist. Whitman and Gonzalez-Torres held creative strategies in common,' the placard reads, according to the institution's email. 'Whitman requested medicinal candy for injured soldiers when he served as a Civil War nurse in this building. Gonzalez-Torres cared for his partner Ross Laycock, named in the candy work's title, who died from HIV/AIDS in 1991. Captions for Gonzalez-Torres's candy works often list specific 'ideal' weights. Yet as caretakers, owners, and museum staff must make ongoing decisions about the work's size and configuration, as well as whether to replenish the candy if visitors choose to take it.'
The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation also rebutted Darnaude's essay on Wednesday in a statement to ARTNews.
'While Gonzalez-Torres's intention for his work was to encourage everyone to embrace their rights and responsibilities to engage, experience, and have opinions, and the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation encourages robust discourse, what we do not condone is the spread of misinformation,' the foundation said. 'We appreciate journalists – and a wide range of people who have seen this exhibition—who have pointed out that there is no 'erasure' in this exhibition. Rather, quite the opposite.'
The statement went on to say that the curators did 'extraordinary amount of research,' and 'not only made a point of incorporating significant queer content throughout this exhibition (including direct references to Gonzalez-Torres's queer identity, his partner Ross Laycock, and both of their deaths from complications from AIDS), but have provided a generous forum for a vast and diverse audience to engage with this content.'
This is not the first time that allegations of queer and AIDS-related erasure have surfaced in regards to the display of Gonzalez-Torres's work. In 2016, POZ magazine reported that a two-page press release for an exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York, which now co-represents the artist's estate, made no mention of HIV at all.
'There isn't a single mention of HIV/AIDS, his pivotal relationship with his lover Ross Laycock (1959–1991), his status as an HIV positive, out gay man, his death from AIDS-related complications, or his cultural heritage as a Cuban-born American,' the article reads. 'These are all inextricably understood factors that have influenced his work. Instead, the focus is entirely on the formalist tendencies, minimalist qualities, and multifarious readings of his work that the gallery hopes might be reached if troublesome biographical information is omitted from this astonishing document.'
Explaining the Trans Narrative Behind This AIDS Era Salsa Classic Going Viral on TikTok
The poignant song tells the story of Simón, born in 1956 and raised to be 'the big man' by a stern father with machista hopes for his child, and what happens when Simón moves away, discovers their queerness, and transitions.
Similarly, in 2022, the Art Institute of Chicago was accused of erasing Gonzalez-Torres's gay identity. According to Artnet, the museum swapped out wall text for 'Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.),' with text that did not refer to Laycock at all. The museum responded by changing the wall text, once again, to include mention of Laycock and the work's connection to the AIDS crisis.
Rock Hushka, a co-curator for the exhibit Art AIDS America at the Bronx Museum, called the Art Institute's move an 'egregious error' and pointed out that in recent years, there's been a move by some to appreciate Gonzalez-Torres's work on an aesthetic level sans political meaning. A museum spokesperson told Hyperallergic that it changed the label after 'visitor feedback we saw on social media.'
'The whole idea of Felix's work is that those two aspects are inextricably combined,' Hushka told Hyperallergic. 'And you should never remove one or the other.'
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