A Stroll at the Denver Art Museum

Artists sometimes open our eyes to realities and injustices the society tolerates. Friday at the art museum my granddaughters Rose and Ulzii took off on their own. I walked with my daughter-in-law Heather, one of the most intelligent and creative persons I have ever known, also one of the most open personalities I have ever spent time with. She and I have been good friends ever since the day my son Michael brought her and her three-year-old son to our house. She’s educated, teaches writing at college and secondary levels, and with my son has reared a quartet of unusually bright and talented youngsters: two boys, two girls.

Heather and I sat in the chairs in the ‘Matisse and Friends’ gallery on the first floor of the Hamilton Building of the museum while the girls went on their own. They had become tired of Mom and Grandpa talking so intensely over the previous two days! Heather and I discussed the art and our two days of visits and interviews at culinary schools, of bus and light rail trips around metro Denver, of meals and walks, and of her children, the boys as well as the girls whom we had accompanied the past two days.

Then I suggested we take my favorite stroll through the museum accessed by riding the elevator to the fourth floor. There we saw mostly empty walls since most of the area was being re-hung. We walked down the huge staircase beneath the impressive Calder mobile. At the foot of the stairs we turned to the installation with grey foxes cavorting in a red café. Heather was especially thrilled with this work. We walked on through the narrow north hallway and entered a gallery that usually offers some kind of audio-video experience. Although I had seen this installation several times, Heather had not. She caught the title “Lot’s Wife” and with her deep curiosity took in the white mannequin with white skin, white clothing, and long white hair, a figure that from her meadow-like setting gazed at a projected lakeshore. Heather read it as a depiction of Lot’s wife after she had glanced back toward Sodom, the hometown she and Lot were leaving, a glance against Yahweh’s command. In the ancient story form Genesis the wife turned into a pillar of salt, thus the white the artist selected. Then Heather noted the thick, muscular neck of the figure, then the very male profile of the face. The artist wants to push us! Oh my God! Was Lot’s wife a man? Was Lot homosexual? Was his wife transgendered or a cross-dresser? The questions piled up. The rationalizations multiplied. The objections flourished. And finally the truth of it settled. If one is gay, he or she cannot turn away from who they are even in the face of nearly universal opposition!

I know from a careful study of the ancient text and its ensuing interpretation that the story’s meaning is not anti-homosexual. It’s a story about lacking hospitality, but of course that sounds too wimpy. The Hebrew God demanded hospitality to strangers. That demand is at the heart of biblical story after biblical story in the Hebrew and Greek bibles. But our artist, Canadian Kent Monkman, wasn’t worried about that. He (or she?—in the context of the work I really don’t know) is concerned about the deeply embedded prejudice inherent in our culture and society that fears anything homosexual, anything queer, or as Wikipedia defines it, anything LGBT! Whoa! LGB and T. Yes.

Heather got it as my artist friend Sue would say.

Gods can often seem unfair, especially ancient Gods to post modern humans. It doesn’t seem right that when Apollo couldn’t resist looking back at Eurydice that SHE then disappeared and couldn’t make the trip from Hades to be reunited with her husband. It doesn’t seem right that when Lot’s wife (of course they left out her name—which in this interpretative context seems like double trouble!) glanced backward at her hometown she was leaving to avoid its destruction that SHE was destroyed anyway.

The artist now seems to be telling LGBs and Ts to watch out. Don’t look back at your fears; don’t doubt the truth of your own reality; don’t get scared at what you are becoming—or you may become a pillar of salt or melt into nothing. DON’T BE AFRAID.

So my little stroll through the museum challenged me to leave my own homo fears and embrace this new life, one of possibility, challenge, and hope.

Watching Heather process the installation and discussing it gave me hope for our family's young adults establishing themselves in creative work, of the ability of the supporting generations to help them, of myself to keep getting over the deeply hidden fears generated by being so truly queer.

Denver, 12 January 2015