St. Pete’s Museum of Fine Arts is devoting the next three days of programming to LGBTQ films and activists.
The coded symbolism in Marsden Hartley’s work overtly alluded to his sexuality (“War Images” expressed grief for the American modernist painter’s likely lover Karl van Freyberg, who had passed following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914). Hartley, along with pop art icon Kenny Scharf and activist Agnes “Aggie” Gund, is just one of the subjects from a weekend of film hosted by St. Pete’s Museum of Fine Art, which has teamed up with the Tampa Bay International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival to present the three-day “Stories We Tell” series.
It kicks off Friday with virtual screenings of “Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide” plus a showing of a short film about Tampa artist Cam Parker, and continues Saturday with a virtual viewing of “Aggie.” The MFA’s hosts an in-person screening of the Hartley-centric film “Cleophas and His Own” to close out the weekend on Sunday.
Stories We Tell: LGBTQ Art & Activism. Friday-Sunday. July 23-25. Online and in-person. Museum of Fine Arts. 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg. mfastpete.org
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This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2021.