Image: Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum has introduced an LGBTQ+ liberation audio tour as part of 'Drawing America: US@250', a season of art installations, programs and partnerships that the museum says is intended to honor people who have imagined a more equitable future and fought for the promise of democracy. The museum describes the tour as one of several collection-based audio guides created for the broader initiative, alongside tours focused on civil rights, immigrant experiences, the women’s movement, climate justice and Indigenous perspectives.
The audio tours are designed for listeners to use with headphones and are framed as intimate encounters with artworks from the museum’s collections. According to the museum, the guides include insights from artists, curators, educators, writers and others, and aim to encourage visitors to consider the people, movements and collective histories that have shaped American culture. The LGBTQ+ liberation tour is presented as part of that larger interpretive approach, using a single artwork to open onto wider questions of identity, freedom and visibility.
At the center of the tour is Robert Peterson’s 'Love is Love' (2022), an oil on canvas in the Brooklyn Museum collection. The museum identifies the work as a gift of Jane Holzer in honor of her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Morris Brukenfeld and Mr. and Mrs. Simon Ackerman, all of whom came from Brooklyn. In the tour, Laval Bryant-Quigley, the museum’s director of community engagement and partnerships, reflects on the painting’s depiction of two people in an intimate pose and on the work’s color, gaze and atmosphere.
Bryant-Quigley describes seeing “two people straddling and lying in a very loving, intimate way” and notes “the beautiful browns” and “the vibrancy of the yellow that’s draped in the back.” The reflection emphasizes the sense of being drawn into what she calls “a sacred space, an intimate space,” while also stressing that the painting “lets you in without spectacle.” Her comments frame the work as an image of everyday intimacy and acceptance rather than display, and connect that reading to the broader idea of freedom to love and express oneself.
The museum’s presentation of the tour places LGBTQ+ liberation alongside a set of other thematic listening guides, suggesting a museum-wide effort to recontextualize familiar objects through social and historical perspectives. The announcement also directs audiences to “explore more LGBTQ+ liberation stories,” indicating that the tour is part of a larger digital and interpretive offering associated with the season.
The museum’s notice identifies its address as 200 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New York, and presents the tour as available now within 'Drawing America: US@250'. The featured artwork remains Robert Peterson’s 'Love is Love', 2022, as interpreted through the new audio format.
