Description

The Leslie Lohman Museum of Art (LLMA, formerly Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art) seeks a modest grant to finish a long-term project focused on cataloguing and digitizing its collection of approximately 25,000 works by LGBTQIA+ artists. The aim of the project, which is fundamental to LLMA’s mission, is to create access to and foster research on LGBTQIA+ art and artists by scholars, students, cultural producers, and the public who benefit from the affirmation provided by a legacy of queer art-making. Beginning with work supported by a 2016 AAP grant ($50,000), LLMA has moved ahead steadily to complete this ambitious work. The overall project budget, which has grown to $550,650, has since then been supported by major grants from IMLS and the Achilles Memorial Fund. The COVID-19 pandemic’s negative impact on visitation heightened LLMA’s determination to make its unique collections fully accessible on-line to a global community.
The project work includes migrating and updating object data to new public-facing cloud-based cataloging software (MuseumPlus), and engaging researchers, artists-in-residence, and paid interns (under the direction of the Chief Curator) to accelerate provenance and art historical research. Luce funds would support a portion of the salary of the Collections Manager (who supervises the project overall), completion of photo-documentation, and travel and access to off-site storage facilities for data collection and photography. Part of the work in completing the transition to the new collections portal on the LLMA website will be the enhancement of search capabilities through a codified vocabulary of LGBTQ+ inclusive terms.
The proposed grant is fully aligned with AAP’s goals of supporting projects in under-studied and shared collections, in collaboration with under-represented communities.