Western Shirt worn in Brokeback Mountain
This week, the Autry National Center will explore the LGBT Community in the American West with the launching of an Inaugral "Out West" Series on December 13th (3 pm - 5 pm).
Admission is free.
"What Ever Happened to Ennis del mar?" (as seen through the eyes of the film Brokeback Mountain) is the first in the "Out West" Series which includes the participation of Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan.
One of the major sponsors is HBO.
The Autry National Center, the first major American museum to recognize the contributions of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community to the American West, proudly announced recently that the series of programs are scheduled to take place over the next twelve months.
The intriguing forays will feature Western scholars, authors, artists, politicians, musicians, and friends of Western LGBTs in discussions and gallery talks at the Autry.
In the future, the Autry expects a fully-fleshed-out program that is not only thought-provoking and insightful, but far-reaching.
Ideas for upcoming events include up-close looks at LGBT Native Americans, LGBT rodeo culture, LGBT political strides (including the struggle for marriage equality) and LGBT contributions to the Western arts.
“What Ever Happened to Ennis del Mar?” is a much-anticipated kick-off program in the "Out West" series.
"When Gene Autry issued his ten-point Cowboy Code in the 1940s, he could not have anticipated the story of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, but the messages of tolerance, fairness, and integrity the Code promotes speak to the acceptance for which the Brokeback Mountain characters longed," an Autry representative noted in a press release recently.
Their story is the departure point for first panel discussion to launch next weekend at the Autry.
Scheduled for December 13 in the Wells Fargo theater, the panel will be moderated by Virginia Scharff, author and professor of history/director of the Center for the Southwest at the University of New Mexico .
The program focuses on the representation of homosexuality in the West (before, during, and after the era depicted in the movie) and explores the Academy Award–winning film’s significance in renewing the Western film for contemporary audiences.
Panelists will also discuss Brokeback Mountain’s impact as a pop-cultural milestone pointing to larger societal conflicts - such as the “red state/blue state” schism that mirrors rural and urban demographics - a divide that often commpels LGBT Westerners to reluctantly abandon rural homes in search of more inclusive enclaves in larger urban areas.
The panel includes Los Angeles Times and NPR film critic Kenneth Turan; Peter M. Nardi, Ph.D., author and professor of sociology at Pitzer College; and William Handley, associate professor of English at the University of Southern California and editor of The Brokeback Book (forthcoming).
"We are proud to be a sponsor of Out West,” said Michael Lombardo (President of Programming and West Coast Operations @ HBO).
"The Autry National Center is to be commended for shining a spotlight on the contributions of the LGBT community to the history and culture of the American West. As a major Western cultural institution, they have taken the lead in engaging contemporary LGBT issues in an unprecedented forum. We wish them continued success with their extraordinary programming mission."
Conceived by Gregory Hinton, consulting producer for the series, Out West was inspired not only by the Autry’s recent installation of the iconic shirts worn by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the film Brokeback Mountain but also by the permanent inclusion of the International Gay Rodeo Association's (IGRA) archives into the Autry Library (both facilitated by Hinton).
Mrs. Gene Autry presided over a launch event in August 2009 celebrating the loan of the shirts from collector Tom Gregory, who won them at a charity auction and shared Hinton’s vision for using them toward a greater good.
At the installation of the iconic shirts, the Autry National Center’s President and CEO John Gray enthusiastically asserted:
"The American West is a place for all of us, and all of us have a place in the West."
“For me,” said Gregory Hinton, who was born in Montana and raised in Wyoming , “the Out West series at the Autry National Center, and all of the experts and participants involved, underscores the need for gay men and women who leave their rural communities to reclaim their country heritage. They may find safety and companionship in cities, but they leave behind a spirit and a connection to the land that cannot be replaced. For those of us who come from the West, it’s in our blood and never lets us go.”
The Out West series at the Autry National Center is made possible through the generous support of Tom Gregory, HBO, the Gill Foundation, and the Small Change Foundation, in association with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and the Courage Campaign.
Panel ModeratorVirginia Scharff is professor of history and director of the Center for the Southwest at the University of New Mexico .
Her scholarly works include Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (1991); Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West (2003); Present Tense: The United States Since 1945 (1996); Coming of Age: America in the Twentieth Century (1998); and the edited volume, Seeing Nature Through Gender (2003).
She is the Women of the West Chair at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles , and a Fellow of the Society of American Historians, and was the Beinecke Senior Research Fellow in the Lamar Center for Frontiers and Borders at Yale University (2008-9). Scharff’s work-in-progress, The Women Jefferson Loved, will be published by HarperCollins in 2010.
She is also the author of four mystery suspense novels, written under the name of VIRGINIA SWIFT: Brown-Eyed Girl (2000), Bad Company (2002), Bye, Bye, Love (2004), and Hello, Stranger (2006).
PanelistsWilliam Handley is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern California who teaches and writes on the literature and culture of the American West. He is the author of Marriage, Violence, and the Nation in the American Literary West, coeditor of an essay collection on Western authenticity, and the editor of The Brokeback Book, to be published around the fifth anniversary of Brokeback Mountain by University of Nebraska Press. He has also written on 19th-century anti-polygamy rhetoric and the contemporary rhetoric against gay marriage.
Peter M. Nardi, Ph.D. is professor of sociology at Pitzer College , a member of the Claremont Colleges. He is the author of Gay Men’s Friendships: Invincible Communities (Chicago, 1999); editor of Men’s Friendships (Sage, 1992) and Gay Masculinities (Sage, 2000); coeditor of Social Perspectives in Lesbian & Gay Studies: A Reader (Routledge, 1998); Growing Up Before Stonewall: Lifestories of Some Gay Men (Routledge, 1994); and In Changing Times: Gay Men & Lesbians Encounter HIV/AIDS (Chicago, 1997). He also wrote two textbooks in survey research methods and formerly served as co-president of GLAAD/LA, chair of the Lesbian & Gay Caucus of the American Sociological Association, and president of the Pacific Sociological Association.
Kenneth Turan is the film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR's Morning Edition, as well as the director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been a staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide, and served as the Times' book review editor. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University 's Graduate School of Journalism, he is the coauthor of Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke. He teaches film reviewing and nonfiction writing at USC and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center . His most recent books are Doubleday’s Free For All: Joe Papp, the Public and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told: the University of California Press ’s Sundance to Sarajevo : Film Festivals and the World They Made; and Never Coming to a Theater Near You, published by Public Affairs Press.
Consulting Producer (Out West) / Gregory HiltonThe son of a country newspaper editor, Gregory Hinton was born in Wolf Point, Montana, on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. Raised in Cody , Wyoming , Hinton graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder , which he attended on a creative writing scholarship.
He is the author of four critically acclaimed novels, including Cathedral City (2001), Desperate Hearts (2002), The Way Things Ought to Be (2003), and Santa Monica Canyon (2007). All of his books are endorsed by the American Library Association’s Booklist, among other national reviews.
Hinton is also an independent filmmaker whose credits include It’s My Party (1996), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and Circuit (2003), which received international theatrical distribution. For his fifth novel, Night Rodeo, Gregory Hinton participated in a 2009 Spring Residency at the prestigious Ucross Foundation in Wyoming .
The Autry National CenterThe Autry National Center is an intercultural history center dedicated to exploring the experiences and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the American West. The Autry celebrates the cultures of the American West through three institutions on two Los Angeles campuses: the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in Mt. Washington; the Museum of the American West in Griffith Park; and the Institute for the Study for the American West, which comprises the Braun Research Library and the Autry Library and is headquartered in Griffith Park.
The hours of operation for Autry National Center ’s museum at its Griffith Park location are Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
The Autry Store’s weekday hours are Tuesday through Friday (10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m).
The Golden Spur Cafe is open Tuesday through Sunday (9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m).
Saturday and Sunday hours for the museum & the Autry Store are 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
The museum, the Autry Store, and the cafe are closed on Mondays.
Museum AdmissionAdults $9.00
Students $5.00
Seniors $3.00 (60 years of age & older)
Children$3.00 (3 -12 years of age)
Autry members, veterans, and children (1-2 years of age) free.
Admission is free on the second Tuesday of every month.
Info: www.autrynationalcenter.org
