Daniel Dallabrida, artist

This Monday, March 26,  at 7 p.m. a multi-generational gathering of gay writers and performers will participate in “Younger Than Jesus: Older Than Aids” at the magnet community space in the Castro. The evening is an extension of artist Daniel Dallabrida’s current exhibition, discussed below…

“I want today’s young gay men to realize that those of us in our fifties and beyond have something to offer,” local artist Daniel Dallabrida told John and I over drinks at the  Eureka Lounge a few weeks back.

“Those of us who lived through the AIDS crisis can walk down the street here in the Castro and feel like we’re invisible today, in this culture of Glee and gay marriage and kids coming out in junior high school.”

Even the setting of Dallabrida’s current exhibition addresses the tensions and connections embedded in his art: His photography and photographed mixed-media collages are on display through next Wednesday, March 28, at magnet, the Castro’s sexual health services center, where so many of today’s young gay San Franciscans are regularly tested for HIV.

The small exhibit, titled  In Now’s waters burn the stars of Then, features works that combine Dallbrida’s casual, snapshot of denim clad, mustachioed gay men circa 1980—the united, unknowing members of a generation soon to be decimated—with posed, slickly lit images of twinks, bears, pigs and other self-proclaimed subtypes torn from the colorful party flyers that confetti the Castro today.

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The de rigeur spring break weekend for San Franciscans this year is a trip north to Tacoma, Washington for the only West Coast showing of  HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.  And LGBT travelers planning to visit the Bay Area should consider adding a day or two to their trip to take advantage of a rare opportunity.

Running from March 7 to June 10, the landmark exhibition views the history of American art from the 1880s to the present through a keenly focused lavender lens. Curators Jonathan Katz and David Ward’s exhibition notes and labels decode references to gay sexuality and romance that have traditionally been tiptoed around by art historians loathe to acknowledge the homosexual within the canonical. The veil is removed from—and important social context restored to—works by artists including Thomas Eakins, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keefe, Charles Henry DeMuth, Romaine Brooks, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg. The exhibition also explores the slow emergence of more overt references to gay sexuality and culture in art, in works by Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, and others. The Tacoma Museum is also offering an extensive series of talks and guided tours to enrich attendees’ experience.

Co-curator Katz talks about the exhibit in a fascinating video after the jump.

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