Sliding Into Visibility - The Visible for a Change: Contemporary Lesbian Artists, U.S.A. Project

The following thesis places the Visible for a Change: Contemporary Lesbian Artists, U.S.A project within the history of queer art and queer curation. The project was initiated by a group of graduate students as part of the Sixth Annual Colloquium Series on Gender, Culture, and Society, held at the Schlesinger Library, Harvard University in 1991. The project was created in order to leave Harvard with a usable archive of contemporary lesbian art, but it became lost and forgotten within the institution’s larger collection. The research undertaken for this thesis aims to contextualize the project within the history of queer art and add to the often-unsung history of lesbian artists. This thesis looks to historically situate the project, the physical manifestation of the resulting exhibition, the subsequent Visible for a Change archive, public response to the project, and the importance of the slideshow within queer art history.