Gay New York

Gay New York and the Arts of the 20th Century by

Capote and Beaton contact sheet

If you’ve been keeping up with our Gay New York section, you’ll know that we get pretty excited over any event that explores the forgotten or unexplored history of life as a gay person in New York. So when we heard the news that the Museum of the City of New York were planning to hold a “Gay New York” conference this Saturday (2/11) devoted to the ways that gay New York artists influenced the cultural life of the city from the 1920′s through the 1960′s – well, I mean, can you imagine what paroxysms of delight went roaring through our thin apartment walls?

Presented in conjunction with the MCNY’s remarkable exhibition Cecil Beaton: The New York Years, the conference will cover topics such as the gay artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance, E.M. Forster and the West Village, Cecil Beaton’s relationship with actress and famed New York recluse Greta Garbo, art dealer Sam Green, and Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Leonard Bernstein. Speakers include George Chauncey, Wendy Moffat, Lynn Garafola, and more. Tickets start at $25 for members, and $35 for non-members, and are available at boxoffice.mcny.org. Don’t miss this rare treat. We’ll see you there!

Photo above:

Truman Capote and Cecil Beaton, ca. 1952
© Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s
Courtesy Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s

Adam Baran

Editor, Keepthelightsonfilm.com

Adam Baran is a NYC-based writer/director with a passion for making films that tell queer stories in unique, risk-taking ways. After graduating in 2003 from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a Bachelor’s degree in Film and TV Production, Adam wrote and directed two short films, Love and Deaf (2004) and Jinx! (2007), which aired in regular rotation on Here! TV and the IFC Channel in the US, respectively. Love and Deaf was released in popular gay shorts collections on DVD in the U.S., Germany and France. In 2009, Adam wrote the daily web comedy MTV Detox for MTV.com. That same year, he finished the feature script Jackpot, which was selected for the 2010 Outfest Screenwriting Lab and performed as a staged reading during the festival. That script led to his being asked to write the webseries The Great Cock Hunt, which is being produced and directed by Jon Marcus (Party Monster) and executive produced by Rose Troche (The L Word) and will premiere in late 2011. Adam’s work as a writer and editor began in 2004 with contributions to the groundbreaking gay journal BUTT Magazine. He became a contributing editor in 2007, had several articles featured in the BUTT Book, and was the online editor of ButtMagazine.com from 2008-2011. He has also written for V Magazine, Pin-Up, Foam and the “T Blog” for the New York Times Style Section. Adam also co-curates the monthly film series Queer/Art/Film with Keep The Lights On director Ira Sachs at the IFC Center in New York. An “essential” series according to the New Yorker, Queer/Art/Film invites queer artists to screen films that have influenced their development. Past guests include Justin Bond, Antony Hegarty, John Kelly, John Cameron Mitchell, Barbara Hammer, Kate Bornstein and Genesis P-Orridge. Adam currently lives in Brooklyn and is working on making a short film based on his feature script Jackpot and writing several new features and shorts.

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