Sailors, wizards and cowboys hide in hundreds of boxes of film packed away for decades, waiting to see the light of day once again.
The Bob Mizer Foundation announced today the launch of a Kickstarter fundraising project that will begin the preservation of a major collection of early gay erotic films produced by porn pioneer Bob Mizer throughout the 1950s - 1970s.
http://kickstarter.BobMizerFoundation.org
A number of exciting events are coming surrounding the DEVOTION: EXCAVATING BOB MIZER show currently on view at the 80WSE Gallery! Take a look and try to make it if you are in the New York area!
The past few months have been huge for the foundation. From the major exhibitions currently on view at MOCA and NYU to Miami Art Basel, Bob Mizer has been all over the place lately. We want to make sure you don't miss anything, so here is some documentation of our recent activity.
In the first solo presentation of the work of trailblazing photographer and film maker Bob Mizer, the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development will present DEVOTION, an exhibition and live-archiving event at the 80 Washington Square East Gallery from November 23 through February 15.
Organized by Billy Miller, Jonathan Berger, and Dennis Bell of the Bob Mizer Foundation, the exhibition will feature 45 black and white and color photographs that span Mizer's career, the majority of which are on view for the first time. The exhibit also features a live archiving component, through which students from the NYU Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions will unearth over 500,000 of the Foundation’s never-before-seen negatives.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is organizing the first American museum exhibition devoted to the art and collaborations of Bob Mizer (1922-1992) and Touko Laaksonen, aka "Tom of Finland" (1920-1991), two of the towering figures of twentieth century erotic art and heroes of an emergent post-war gay culture. Organized by MOCA Curator Bennett Simpson and Guest Co-Curator Richard Hawkins, the exhibition will feature a selection of Laaksonen's masterful drawings and collages, alongside Mizer's photographs, films, and ephemera, including his groundbreaking magazine Physique Pictorial—where drawings by Laaksonen were first published in 1957.
