BECKET, Mass. — A coalition of local organizations is calling for submissions for the 2nd annual Berkshire LGBTQ+ Pride Art Exhibit this spring. 

 

The Becket Arts Center, Q-MoB and the Berkshire Queer History Project are supporting the exhibit to celebrate the work of local LGBTQ+ artists at a time when there are efforts to erase and defund diversity, equity and inclusion and queer arts initiatives in government, education and the arts. 

 

The exhibition will be hosted at the Becket Arts Center from June 11 through July 5. Works must be submitted by March 29. More information here.

 

Artists will receive 75 percent of the money from any of their works that sell, plus press, art patronage, and community visibility. Submissions are welcomed from artists who live in Berkshire County or any of the seven counties that surround Berkshire County: Franklin, Hampshire and Hampden, Bennington in Vermont, Litchfield in Connecticut, and Columbia and Rensselaer in New York State. 

 

A new Berkshire Queer Artists Collective is meeting twice a month to actively promote local exhibits and performances and to build practical collaboration and mentorship among those artists and their supporters. Learn more about the Collective by sending a note; meetings are held at the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield at 6:30 p.m. on the second and fourth Thursdays in person or via video chat.

 

LGBTQ+ artists have been integral to building and sustaining arts institutions in the Berkshires for more than 200 years, such as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Ted Shawn, but fewer people know the many local queer artists. This Pride Exhibit is for those artists who enrich our day-to-day lives.

 

Exhibit sponsors thank the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation's ART Fund and Central Berkshire Fund for their generous grants and welcome any online tax-deductible donations.

 

"Throughout history queer artists like Socrates, Leonardo Da Vinci, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, David Hockney, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Tracy Chapman and Robert Mapplethorpe knew that as an artist 'Silence equals Death,' and that when the forces of repression rise, queer artists must resist however they can in whatever ways they dare," said Bart Church, Q-MoB's executive director. "Some of these artists were killed or repressed for insisting on their freedom, but all of them inspired the world to be more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.  

 

"Let us celebrate our local Berkshire queer artists who are proudly standing on the shoulders of queer artists from the past who made space for the beauty and power of diversity."