About the exhibition
The Lenin Museum reflects on the historical contradictions and complexities of intersections between Communism and anti-Communism as well as ideology and sexual identity. The project acknowledges the Lenin Museum as a site for memorialization not only of Lenin but of the fate of free expression of sexual identity in Russia in periods of criminalization between 1933 and 1993, after Lenin’s decriminalization in 1917. The show reflects on how Cold War forces of anti-Communism in the West instrumentalized homophobic sentiments as a weapon in the struggle against the Soviet Union, and how the anti-Communist discourse contributes today to the construction of political homophobia in the post-Soviet Russia. The Lenin Museum is curated by Katherine Carl, curator, the James Gallery, the Graduate Center, CUNY.
For more on The Lenin Museum, read Perry Brass’s essay on the exhibition and Yevgeniy Fiks in the Huffington Post “The Manly Pursuit of Desire: Yevgeniy Fiks and 'The Lenin Museum' at CUNY's James Gallery” here.
Other recent press includes Louis Proyect’s review here, a review in OutThere Magazine here, and an interview with Yevgeniy Fiks and Kathleen MacQueen here about the current exhibition The Lenin Museum. Click here for an article in The Calvert Journal that covers two exhibits--"The Lenin Museum" and "Monument to Cold War Victory."
Cosponsored by the CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies; Public Science Project.
