Recent Acquisitions

Did you know that the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art’s collection includes over 25,000 works of art spanning more than three centuries? As we expand our holdings, we are committed to supporting living, working artists who represent a wide range of LGBTQIA+ experience. We’re very excited to share our most recent acquisitions, works by Jonathan Lyndon Chase and Lola Flash. Flash was a Leslie-Lohman Artist Fellow in our inaugural Fellowship cohort, 2017-2018. Jonathan Lyndon Chase is creating the award for this year's Leslie-Lohman gala honoree, Honey Dijon. Both artists are based in the United States, and their work reframes difference, confronts assumptions, and grapples with American hegemony through creating other worlds. These works will be on view in the Leslie-Lohman’s Living Room Gallery from October 19-January 15, 2023.

Jonathan Lyndon Chase is a Philadelphia-based visual artist whose works often resist easy categorization. Employing a variety of media–including acrylic paint, photo-collage, glitter and graphite–they render spaces and scenes in which bodies twist and fold into each other’s planes. Much of their work focuses on Black, queer intimacy. lower Back is part of a recent series in which Chase engages the trope of the cowboy, typically imagined in popular media as cisgender, heterosexual, and white, despite the long history of Black, Indigenous, and Mexican cowherds in America. Myths of whitewashed virility are transformed in the queered space of the tattoo parlor, as the two Black figures inhabit a space of intimate support and vulnerability. Special thanks to our Board member Dan Berger for his generous support of this acquisition.

Working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics for more than three decades, photographer Lola Flash’s work challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual, and racial preconceptions. An active member of ACT UP during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was notably featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ communities of color worldwide. Flash works primarily in portraiture with a 4x5 film camera, engaging those who are often deemed invisible. Flash’s practice is firmly rooted in social justice advocacy around sexual, racial, and cultural difference.

Flash has work included in important collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Brooklyn Museum. Flash had a solo show in 2018, Lola Flash: 1986 – Present, at Pen + Brush in New York. Flash's photography is featured in the 2009 book Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present. They are currently a proud member of the Kamoinge Collective. Flash received her bachelor's degree from Maryland Institute and her Masters’ from London College of Printing, in the UK.

Image Description: lower Back. 2021.10.1. 74 x 85.5 inches. Acrylic paint, glitter, spray paint, marker, oil stick, graphite, photo paper, and collage on muslin. 2020. Museum purchase with funds by Dr. Daniel S. Berger. Courtesy of the artist and Company, New York

A seated Black person gives a tattoo to another inside a red-hued room, their twisting bodies at times difficult to discern, mirroring the chaotic interior of the room. There is a hint of a third person, the outline of a hand, on the man receiving the tattoo.

2022.11.1 V is for Veteran Lola Flash 24 x 20 Chromogenic print 1993 Acquisition O'Neal Fund

Image description: A cis woman presenting subject stands center. She is wearing a sailor hat and button up sleeveless blouse. Her face is in profile towards the left and her left arm is flexed in a traditional bicep curl. Slightly behind her is a reproduction of the Statue of Liberty draped with an American flag. The beach and ocean are in the background. The colors in the print are inverted. The woman's skin has a green tone and the sky and ocean in the background are orange.

2022.11.2 Soar Lola Flash 24 x 20 Chromogenic print 1988 Acquisition O'Neal Fund

Image description: An athletic subject is seen center in the image, jumping upward with their hands extended above their head. They are photographed from below in motion between two Doric columns and in front of a large fabric drape. The colors in the print are inverted. The subject's skin is purple and the columns and fabric in the background are a light red. Areas of darkness have become white in the image.