Taking Beardsley to Harlem

Often referred to as the “Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance,” Richard Bruce Nugent drew upon the work of Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde to fashion a queer Black modernist aesthetic in the 1920s and 30s. 

Inspired by the current Gibbes Museum exhibition Something Terrible May Happen, the Avery in partnership with the Gibbes presents this understudied story with speaker Kristin Mahoney, Professor of English at Michigan State University.