Queering the Collection: Jonathan Katz

Explore From Gérôme to Monet: Stories from the 19th-Century Collection in Hackerman House at 1 West Mount Vernon Place with Jonathan Katz, a trailblazing queer art historian, curator, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

By the last half of the 19th century, the art movement of Classicism became the most acceptable mode for addressing the erotic by allowing Northern European sexual fantasies to be visualized through depictions of Greek myths. But Classical culture’s permissiveness of same-sex desire was controversial, so artists such as Alma Taddema instead sought to “straighten” up the Classical past, as in his oil painting Sappho and Alcaeus from 1881. In this talk, Katz addresses how queerness often manifested more as an absence than a presence.

You may also like the following events from The Walters Art Museum:

• This Saturday, 4th October, 01:00 pm, Teen Takeover: Mythology Mayhem in Baltimore
• Next Sunday, 12th October, 02:00 pm, Curator Tour: Coffee, Tea, Tobacco, Betel, and Wine in Asian Art in Baltimore
• This month, 25th October, 09:00 pm, The Walters Art Museum Gala & Party 2025 in Baltimore

Also check out other Arts events in Baltimore, Fine Arts events in Baltimore.