A Veteran Leader in the New York LGBTQ Art Scene Has Been Appointed by the Mayor as the City’s New Cultural Affairs Commissioner

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has named Gonzalo
Casals, currently the director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of
Art in New York, as the city’s new Cultural Affairs
Commissioner.

“Art and culture should enrich the
lives of all New Yorkers—not just a select few,” De Blasio said in
a statement. “Gonzalo understands how to uplift the experiences of
New Yorkers from all five boroughs.”

Casals, who is originally from Argentina, has headed up the
Leslie-Lohman Museum, which focuses on works of art by LGBTQ
artists, since 2017. He was previously deputy director of El Museo
del Barrio and, starting in 2013, was its interim director. He
also served as vice president for education and community
engagement at Friends of the High Line, the elevated public park on
Manhattan’s west side.

At the Department of Cultural Affairs, Casals said he would
“look forward to continuing to further the work that the agency has
been doing,” he told the New York
Times. “Opening up opportunities in the sector for folks
like me—immigrant communities, queer communities, Latinx
communities.”

Casals is taking over an agency that has been thrust into
turmoil in recent years. His predecessor, Tom Finkelpearl, abruptly
resigned from the post after six years following the outbreak of
numerous controversies, often concerning the selection and
placement of new public monuments.

The city has sought to diversify its statues, which
overwhelmingly commemorate white men. But the efforts have hit
stumbling blocks again and again. The city’s SheBuilt initiative to
increase the number of statues of historical women was criticized
for leaving out Catholic
women, while a monument to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony was called racist for
omitting black suffragettes.

Meanwhile, a planned monument to Shirley
Chisholm, the first African American congresswoman in the
US, is getting heat for going up not in Chisholm’s
Bedford-Stuyvesant district, but near the entrance to Prospect Park
in a more prosperous neighborhood.

The post A Veteran Leader in the New York LGBTQ Art Scene
Has Been Appointed by the Mayor as the City’s New Cultural Affairs
Commissioner appeared first on artnet News.