Memorial To A Marriage: 20 Years of the World’s First Marriage Equality Monument
A Discussion with Patricia Cronin and Eric Shiner
November 3, 6–7 pm
Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery
Memorial To A Marriage (2002) is the first and only Marriage Equality monument in the world. Cronin created a three-ton Carrara marble, mortuary sculpture of herself and (now) wife, artist Deborah Kass, recumbent in an entwined embrace on a bed, when same sex marriage was illegal in the United States. Employing the American Neoclassical sculptural form to address a federal failure of prohibiting same sex couples to legally wed, she purchased their burial plot in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY a National Historic Landmark, and permanently installed the statue on their future final resting place. By acquiring her own land, she also addressed the scarcity of real women (as opposed to allegorical female forms) honored in public monuments.
Memorial To A Marriage (2002) has been exhibited in over 50 exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL, and Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, New Orleans, among others.
Bronze versions of the sculpture are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, The Fuhrman Family Foundation, New York, Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami and Kelvingrove Art Museum and Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland. It is permanently on view in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland.
Eric Shiner was most recently the executive director of Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. He was formerly artistic director of White Cube, New York and senior vice president of contemporary art at Sotheby’s. Prior to this, Shiner was the director of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh from 2010 to 2016, and was the Milton Fine Curator of Art at The Warhol from 2008 to 2010. A leading scholar on Andy Warhol and Asian contemporary art, Shiner lived and worked in Japan for a total of six years and was assistant curator on the inaugural Yokohama Triennale in 2001. Shiner has curated dozens of contemporary art exhibitions in cities around the globe and was the team leader on The Warhol Museum’s major Warhol retrospective that traveled to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo between 2012 and 2014. Notable exhibitions include Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei in 2015/16, Deborah Kass: Before and Happily Ever After in 2012, Armory Focus: USA at the Armory Show in 2013 and Armory Platform in 2017. He is immediate past president of the board of Visual AIDS, a NYC-based nonprofit promoting the artistic legacy of those artists lost to and living with AIDS. He is also on the board of The Romare Bearden Foundation and Art at a Time Like This. He lives in Lansing, Michigan and upstate New York with his partner, Dr. Ishaan Kumar, and their long-haired dachshund, Juno.
Patricia Cronin is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist whose paintings, sculptures and public art examine issues of gender, sexuality, and social justice. In 2002, Cronin created Memorial To A Marriage, the first and only Marriage Equality monument in the world. Cronin’s work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally, including Shrine For Girls at the 56th Venice Biennale that traveled to The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, the LAB Gallery, Dublin, Ireland and Catherijne Convent Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Other solo exhibitions were presented at the American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy, Capitoline Museum’s Centrale Montemartini Museum, Rome, Italy, Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans, LA, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, and the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL. In 2022, Memorial To A Marriage, became the centerpiece of the world’s first VR LGBTQ+ Museum. Cronin is the recipient of numerous awards including: the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, both in Washington, DC; and Kelvingrove Art Galleries and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland, Perez Art Museum Miami, FL, and Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL, among others. She is Professor of Art at Brooklyn College, CUNY.