As the Trump administration targets DEI initiatives, threatens arts funding, and fuels anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, queer leaders in the arts are confronting urgent challenges.
Presented by Boston Art Review in partnership with Twenty Summers, this panel brings together Michael J. Bobbitt (Mass Cultural Council), Giselle Byrd (The Theater Offensive), Jameson Johnson (Boston Art Review), , and Quil Lemons (curator of “American Faggot Party” at Twenty Summers) to discuss how these shifting policies and cultural attacks impact their work and communities. From navigating funding cuts to protecting spaces for queer expression, they’ll share strategies for resistance, advocacy, and sustaining queer-led cultural work in a precarious political climate.
This program will be moderated by Gavin Kennedy, a Provincetown arts leader who serves on the executive committee of the Fine Arts Works Center and as a co-chair for the ICA Boston’s advisory board.
4:45 PM — Doors Open + Mingle
5:05 PM — Panel Begins
6:15 PM — Reception in the Gallery
Following the discussion, a reception will be held at Stanley where “American Faggot Party” is on view. Later that evening, guests are encouraged to join Twenty Summers and Quil Lemons for a dance party with Papi Juice at the Boatslip from 9:00 PM–1:00 AM.
About The Panelists
Michael J. Bobbitt is a distinguished theater artist. As the executive director of Mass Cultural Council, he is the highest-ranking public official in Massachusetts state government focused on arts and culture. Since 2021, he has led the agency through several initiatives, including the development of its first Racial Equity Plan, d/Deaf & Disability Equity & Access Plan, and Native American & Indigenous Equity Plan; the launch of the nation’s first statewide Social Prescribing Initiative; the securing and distribution of $60.1 million in pandemic relief funding; and the design and implementation of a strategic plan for fiscal years 2024–2026. Recently, Bobbitt was listed as one of the Boston Business Journal’s Power 50 Movement Makers. He has been appointed by Governor Maura Healey to serve on both the Governor’s Advisory Council on Black Empowerment and the Massachusetts Cultural Policy Development Advisory Council and recently received an honorary doctor of fine arts, honoris causa from Dean College. He is a proud alumnus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Giselle Byrd is the executive director of the Theater Offensive, located in Boston, MA, making her the first Black trans woman to lead a regional theater company in the United States, where she is passionately continuing and amplifying the theater’s mission for uplifting and elevating the work of queer and transgender artists of color and LGBTQIA2S+ youth and their allies. She was recently appointed to the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, making her the first trans woman of color to serve on the commission. She plans to continue their mission to advance women and girls toward full equity in all areas of life and to promote rights and opportunities for all women and girls, ensuring that trans women and girls are not an afterthought. As a producer, she holds the honor of being the first transgender woman to be accepted into Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program. In November 2024, Boston’s 25th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance Committee awarded her the inaugural Boston Trans Art & Culture Trendsetter Award, following the announcement that her efforts in conjunction with the Theater Offensive caused Boston’s City Council to officially commemorate Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Jameson Johnson is a writer, curator, and community organizer based in Boston. She is the founder and executive director at Boston Art Review, an online and print publication founded in 2017 committed to facilitating discourse around contemporary art across New England. She has held positions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and currently serves on the board of Catalyst Conversations and the Foundry Arts Consortium’s Advisory Committee as well as the MassArt Auction Committee. She has curated exhibitions at Boston Center for the Arts, Fountain Street Gallery, and Boston Cyberarts, as well as served on numerous juries across New England. Her writing has appeared in Artsy, Artnet, Upstate Diary, and the Boston Globe among others.
Quil Lemons is a New York-based artist and photographer whose work tenderly reimagines the intersections of Blackness, queerness, masculinity, and kinship. Lemons received his BA from Eugene Lang College at The New School. His practice is deeply rooted in personal mythology, using the camera to build worlds where softness is a form of resistance and beauty becomes a site of liberation. His images oscillate between the intimate and the iconic, drawing from familial archives, fashion fantasy, and queer futurity to forge a visual language that is at once poetic, political, and defiantly tender. In 2021, he became the youngest photographer to create the lead image for the cover of Vanity Fair. His work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, Hannah Traore Gallery, and internationally across both fine art and editorial platforms. Lemons’s vision is a meditation on care—how we hold one another, how we see ourselves, and how we might be seen anew. He offers not just pictures, but portals.
About The Moderator
Gavin Kennedy is a seasoned brand leader and storyteller with over twenty-five years of experience in growing global brands at companies such as P&G, Dunkin’ Brands, and Campbell’s. Fifteen years ago, he began channeling that expertise into his passion for contemporary art. Most recently, founding Emergent Art Advisory, to help collectors, institutions, and businesses engage with emerging artists through a holistic approach that combines collecting, management, philanthropy, and strategic insight. He is a trustee and executive committee member of the Fine Arts Work Center, a leading residency that has been pivotal to the careers of artists like Lisa Yuskavage and Firelei Báez. He also serves as co-chair of the ICA Boston’s Advisory Board, where he sits on the Collections & Exhibitions and Marketing Committees. Gavin is deeply involved in identifying and supporting the next generation of cultural voices.