Ryan McNamara

  • previews January 2020

    “Nicole Eisenman: Sturm und Drang”

    Curated by Heather Pesanti

    With each exhibition, Nicole Eisenman, our radical lesbian Jim Henson, births a band of soothsayer humanoids—sapient critters and doofus sages who immediately take up residence in my brain. A centerpiece of this show of nearly forty works is Eisenman’s Procession, 2019, the ensemble of sculptures that debuted at last year’s Whitney Biennial. I imagine this troupe of apocalyptic misfits stumbling off the Whitney’s balcony and initiating a cross-country odyssey, propelled by a trail of fracking farts as they bumble through Texas’s vast red flesh. Destination: the blue

  • interviews June 25, 2019

    Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt

    I first met Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt in the mid-2000s, while I was working at SAGE (“Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders.” SAGE originally stood for “Senior Action in a Gay Environment,” which I preferred. Who doesn’t love the naughty ambiguity hanging around that word, Action?)

    At SAGE I worked with Gay Liberation Front cofounder Jerry Hoose on two panel discussions about the activism inspired by the Stonewall Riots. The apocrypha generated by people who claimed to be there drove Jerry crazy, and he told me that there was no realer deal than Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt. Jerry was so proud of Tommy’s