This text is a part of Hyperallergic’s 2024 Pleasure Month collection, that includes interviews with art-world queer and trans elders all through June.
Carol Ockman simply can’t cease mentoring. As her associate, Peggy, rearranged a bouquet behind her, she peered over a set of spherical blue frames with pink accents — one in an in depth assortment of rad glasses — and lectured me through Zoom on the pitfalls of working too onerous. That intuition displays her many years spent as a professor of Artwork Historical past at Williams School — however she’s been multidisciplinary since earlier than it was a buzzword. She’s spent six years curating at a botanical backyard in Florida, written a guide about actress Sarah Bernhardt’s handkerchief, and carried out in paramodernities (2018–19), which I can solely name an experimental lecture-dance-performance, amongst an awe-inspiring physique of labor that may’t be constrained in a wordcount.
In our dialog, we talked about her identities as scholar, artist, lesbian, and good friend. We additionally deliberate the subsequent reunion with these within the artwork world fortunate sufficient to name her mentor, together with individuals who discover themselves on the Whitney Museum, at Aperture, and right here, at Hyperallergic.
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Hyperallergic: Having now been within the artwork world for just a few years, I’m realizing that you simply’ve at all times had a unique vibe from others who’re as established. You have been my thesis advisor, however even you then felt extra like a good friend.
Carol Ockman: You recognize, I’ve some buddies who’re my age, however largely I’ve buddies who’re 30, 40, 50 years youthful than I’m. And that’s a blessing — if you wish to be within the modern world, you higher be hanging out with younger folks. And that’s why instructing was in some methods such an excellent match for me. There’s a unique type of vitality there, to assume again to if you have been that age. That’s a part of being a mentor.
H: Did you may have queer mentors?
CO: Honey, I used to be fortunate to actually have a lady mentor. I imply, significantly.
Once I assume again to queer influences all through my life, I consider the work of artists in the course of the AIDs disaster: Felix Gonzalez-Torres or Zoe Leonard. I consider Audre Lorde, Adrienne Wealthy. Norma Brody and Mary Girard have been such pioneers, and James Saslow. These aren’t individuals who I knew, however folks whose work I knew — there was so little on the market.
However I’m the girl that I’m as a result of I met Linda Nochlin once I was 20 years outdated. It was originally of second-wave feminism. I used to be in her Girls in Artwork seminar when she was a visiting professor at Stanford, the place I used to be an undergrad. She taught me that pondering is about opening up a type of distinction. I bear in mind the place I used to be once I learn Why Have There Been No Nice Girls Artists?, six months after it had been printed in 1971. It was a revelation to me. And it launched one thing else that had by no means crossed my thoughts: that I might be a professor. The horizon of expectation was so completely different then. That type of distinction got here to be integral to who I’m.
H: That “distinction” — did it inflect your profession, in what you selected to review?
CO: I feel the truth that I’m an artwork historian who’s considerably out of the field when it comes to my pursuits has to do with the arc of my life expertise: I began out as a voice main — I needed to be an opera singer. So I went and studied Italian. There, I began taking a look at artwork. Then I met Linda.
That feeling of distinction prolonged simply into my analysis: into historiography. You recognize — queer research and demanding race research got here into being at across the similar time. In fact, I used to be at all times excited about questions of identification, and a part of that’s as a result of I used to be educated by social historians of artwork, who truly talked about issues like class and gender, which the self-discipline didn’t interact in any respect till it seeped in within the late ‘80s or ‘90s.
In loads of methods, my guide, Ingres’s Eroticized Our bodies: Retracing the Serpentine Line (1995) is a queer guide. I wasn’t drawn to Ingres’s feminine our bodies, however I assumed they have been bizarre, and attention-grabbing, and it’s fascinating to me that various students that work on Ingres are queer. My guide has a chapter on queer males, a chapter on a Jewish portrait sitter. Actually, it was a guide that handled marginal identities, that attempted to overturn the way in which they have been repurposed or eradicated by Modernism. And it ends with Cindy Sherman and Kiki Smith and their work within the ‘90s. I used to be principally like: “You assume you may objectify the feminine physique? Overlook it. You’ll be able to’t.”
H: You point out that loads of these Ingres students are additionally queer. Who do you view as your friends locally?
CO: Sharon Marcus, who teaches at Columbia College, is a colleague and good friend. Adrian Rifkin. Miranda Mason. Sarah Betzer, who’s on the College of Virginia. Wendy Leeks, who wrote an essential dissertation on the College of Leeds. James Small and Todd Porterfield come to thoughts. Vanessa Schwartz. My good friend Ken Silver, who spent his profession instructing artwork historical past at New York College — we’ve identified one another since our first week of grad college, in order that’s like 50 years, Lisa.
H: The deeper I wade into the artwork group in New York the extra I see the extent of your affect, not simply in myself however in others: curators, teachers, artists, writers. Do you assume your identification formed your determination to tackle that extracurricular function as a mentor?
CO: I feel it isn’t simply that I occur to be lesbian, as a result of I wasn’t at all times that. However I used to be a lady, and I used to be a secular Jew, so I used to be at all times marginal. I feel my energy comes from my expertise of being marginal. Once I was at Williams, once I was advising first years, I requested the Dean’s workplace: Would you please give me college students who’re going to have a troublesome time being at Williams? I bought worldwide college students, I bought folks of shade, I bought queers. That was one thing I felt like I may do as a result of I used to be in such a minority — once I began, there have been barely any girls round, in New England in such a WASP, male setting. And at Williams, I may inform instantly who knew what it was prefer to really feel marginal, and who didn’t, of their have an effect on, within the methods they engaged questions and issues. In a manner, that expereince was an intro to being a queer elder.
H: You’re an artwork historian, however you’re additionally a lot extra — I imply, you curated a backyard for six years on the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. You’ve organized a present on the Jewish Museum. You’ve carried out a one-woman present, you’ve carried out dance performances. How did you find yourself doing all of this, and was your identification part of that?
CO: I do know I have to’ve talked about this to you, however at Yale, the place I used to be PhD scholar, I needed to do a dissertation on New York galleries within the Fifties. I couldn’t. They wouldn’t let me do it. It was too modern, they mentioned. So I ended up within the nineteenth century. Which was not a nasty place to be. However I do assume that had lots to do with the course of my profession. The place I may do modern artwork was in my curating, and in my efficiency.
Stuff simply comes to at least one — I feel one falls into issues lots. I used to be requested by Linda Nochlin and Tamar Garb to contribute to an anthology about representations of Jewishness. So I simply got here up with Sarah Bernhardt. I used to be like, “Properly, I don’t know something about her, however I feel she’s attention-grabbing.” So I grew to become a Bernhardt scholar. And that was very bizarre of me. Lots of artwork historians didn’t perceive that. However I’m pleased with that work: She was a fashionista and a sculptor, and I may finally show that she was a lesbian, to the extent that the longest, most essential amorous liaison of her life was with a lady, the painter Louise Abbéma.
I discovered methods to deliver my friends in, and constantly discover myself in new firm. I used to be within the place of doing a present on Bernhardt, so I invited Ken. After which I bought the chance to be in a efficiency dedicated to Bernhardt on the Jewish Museum. I discovered myself on this — and you realize, I by no means mentioned this with them, nevertheless it’s how I noticed it — this lesbian triumvirate with Anne Bogart, the director, and Cherry Jones, the actor, paying homage to this huge mama lesbian.
H: When did you your self come out?
CO: I didn’t see myself as a lesbian till my early forties. I got here out to my mom once I was 41. So I didn’t have the expertise of lots of my queer buddies — this “I knew from the time I used to be 4,” or “I got here out once I was a teen.” I had my first lesbian expertise once I was 22, and it was a shock to me. It was proper after my undergraduate diploma. It was the early seventies, we have been residing in Italy, and we have been very closeted. She already had a fledgling place in academia, and it simply was not attainable to be out.
After that fairly essential relationship, I used to be with males for a few decade. I didn’t have a lot luck. From my early forties, I’ve been solely with girls. After my first long-term relationship with a lady, I began to simply say, “I’m a lesbian.” Nevertheless it didn’t turn into pure to me till I bought concerned with my life associate, whom I met in my fifties.
You recognize, my buddies knew. Sure folks I trusted, colleagues. Nevertheless it was simply not the primary assertion of who I used to be or am. That mentioned, I really feel very blissful to depend myself as lesbian. I feel it’s essential. I feel that’s influenced the numerous college students I’ve mentored, queer college students and different marginalized college students. It’s been a terrific pleasure to me, one of many issues that’s most enriched my life. I embrace the time period “queer elder,” regardless that I don’t know that I had any myself, or at the very least none that may declare themselves as such.
H: You won’t have had any queer elders, however we have now you. That appears like a testomony to your work, your affect — and the world could also be taking a flip for the higher.
CO: It’s actually essential to make frequent trigger with people who find themselves actively being discriminated in opposition to. On this time we stay in, a number of identities are in danger. Individuals are vastly myopic and binary of their pondering. It’s a troublesome time to see how that’s being weaponized, the way it’s bled into the tradition writ giant. My work Trauma and Empathy on the International Stage (2015–16) truly underscores particularly that: that folks can discuss cross trauma, folks can discuss throughout marginalities. There are people who find themselves higher in their very own little niches — that’s tremendous too. I’m simply not certainly one of them.
