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Events & Exhibitions
Foundation Announcements
Art News
 
Artists Space Mounts Massive  Retrospective 
A Review in The Village Voice
 
Village Voice Review of Tom of Finland Exhibition
TOM OF FINLAND (Touko Laaksonen, Finnish, 1920 - 1991),
Untitled, 1968, Graphite on paper, 11.63" x 8.13",
Tom of Finland Foundation Permanent Collection, � 1968 Tom of Finland Foundation


The Norman Rockwell of gay pornographers, Tom of Finland imagined utopian tableaux of Olympian fucking, a world of unbound sexual pleasure where nary a worry interrupts a cock's travels from ass to mouth and back again. In Tom's drawings, sex happens outdoors, on motorcycles, in the woods or in prison, and it happens often - so often, and with such salubrious lust (even the s/m boys are having fun), that these once-scandalous pleasures nearly come off as quotidian romps.

 

That "another day, another orgy" feeling suffuses Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play, an elegantly installed retrospective at Artists Space that surveys five decades of work by the Finnish artist, who died in 1991. These 200-odd drawings and gouaches, plus many more collaged studies, are a hat-tip to an artist who operated under the pop-culture radar even as he was by turns influenced by and influential in its image-making.

 

From an article by Jessica Dawson

 
Drawn to Kink
An Article in Bay Area Reporter

Drawn To Kink
Tom of Finland's iconic hypermasculine imagery helped to formulate
the modern gay male leather scene's look and aesthetic.
Image: Finland Foundation

To celebrate the importance of erotic art, San Francisco Leathermen's Discussion Group (LDG) is hosting a Tom of Finland Foundation Reception and Erotic Art Silent Auction on September 23, 2015 from 6:30pm to 9:30pm at the SF LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street.

Along with committee chair Graylin Thornton, co-chair Richard Bolingbroke, and a bevy of volunteers, at the heart of the event is Durk Dehner, president and cofounder of the Tom of Finland Foundation.
From an article by Race Bannon
 
The Broad Museum
 Opening September 20, 2015

Broad Museum opens September 20, 2015

Advance tickets for The Broad, the new contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles that will open to the public with free general admission on Sept. 20, will be available online at thebroad.org beginning Aug. 31, the museum announced. The Broad also announced its hours of operation and other visitor information.

Founded by philanthropists and longtime collectors Eli and Edythe Broad and designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, the museum will be home to the nearly 2,000-piece Broad collection and will showcase one of the world's leading collections of masterworks of postwar and contemporary art on two floors of galleries.

"Edye and I are delighted to welcome everyone to this museum, and we are excited to share the contemporary art in our collection with the public," said Eli Broad.

 
An Article in Artslant

Sculptures We Do Not See
T  

Sculptures We Do Not See, an exhibition showcasing Soviet Era art, opened last Friday at Moscow's Manege Center. The exhibition included works from participants of the LeSS group, active in parallel to conventional art of the Soviet era, including artists such as Vadim Sidur, Nikolai Silis, and Vladimir Lemport. Topics surrounding the works include religious themes-a censored subject during Russia's Soviet reign between 1922 and 1991.

Decades after creation, and the sculptures still show themselves capable of inciting controversy. "Delusional people came to the exhibition who broke several works belonging to the Manege collection, by Vadim Sidur," Yelena Karneyeva, spokesperson for the Manege Museum, told AFP.

Head of the conservative religious organization God's Will, Dmitry Tsorionov-who uses the pseudonym Dmitry Enteo-confirmed he was present opening day of the exhibition when the incident took place. "We called the police," he said. "They will close the exhibition for offending believers."


From an article by Kimberly B. Johnson
 
Daily Crush: Tom of Finland T-shirt
An Article in Out

Tom of Finland T-shirt
The Eckhaus Latta-designed muscle tee shows archival inspiration
from the erotic master. Photo by Peter Tomka.  

The Tom of Finland Foundation has collaborated with artists and designers to satisfy a new generation of collectors with a variety of objects and apparel (including rugs, clothes, and dildos), so I was curious what might be available at Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play, the comprehensive Tom of Finland exhibition, through Sept. 13 at Artists Space in New York City's SoHo.

Two T-shirts are available for purchase, a simple white one with a drawing and an elaborate muscle tee with that has a high-resolution printing of collaged images from his archive on both sides (an example of one the designs is pictured below).

From an article by Jerry Portwood
Tailpiece

Bust of  Rentboy.com Leads to Protests
An Article in Huffpost

Rentboy.com Protest
 Courtesy of Keith Gemerek
 People gathered across from the federal courthouse in Brooklyn
on Thursday to protest the raid on Rentboy.com last week.

A crowd gathered outside the federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Thursday to protest last week's government raid on a gay escort website, a crackdown that sex workers and LGBT activists have likened to the police raids on gay bars and bathhouses of the 1970s.

Protesters demanded that prosecutors drop the charges against Jeffrey Hurant, chief executive of Rentboy.com, and six other current or former employees of the site who were arrested on Aug. 25 for allegedly promoting prostitution. Federal authorities burst into the Rentboy offices near Union Square that day, made several arrests, seized assets and took down the website.
From an article by Lila Shapiro
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