Pagan Babies Gallery Talk

Gallery Talk

Event Date: Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023
Event Time: Doors open 6:30pm, talk starts 7pm
Location: Institute 193, Main Gallery
215 N. Limestone, Lexington, KY 40507
Admission: FREE
Description:  Please join us Thursday, October 19th, at 6:30 p.m. for a gallery talk with artist Robert Morgan and historian Jonathan Coleman, founders of the Faulkner Morgan Archive. Bob and Jon will be discussing the Pagan Babies and their role in queer Kentucky history, as well as the evolution of the Pagan Babies project and subsequent exhibition. They will also be joined by curator Paul Michael Brown and artist Cooper L. Gibson, with a Q&A following their discussion.

The recently released book is largely comprised of a thought-to-be-lost portfolio of photographs produced by John Denny Ashley in collaboration with artist Robert Morgan and his cadre of artists and misfits from the mid-1970s into the 1980s. In addition to Ashley’s photographs, the concurrent exhibition contains work by other artists depicting the Pagan Babies, their predecessors, and those they later inspired. The show remains on view at Institute 193’s main gallery space, located at 215 North Limestone, Lexington, KY, through November 4.

Robert Morgan is a Lexington native and an HIV/AIDS activist and artist. His work can be seen in galleries and museums throughout the country. He has worked on numerous projects, both artistic and political, in the LGBTQ community for over fifty years.

Raised in Eastern Kentucky, Jonathan Coleman was a James Still Fellow at the University of Kentucky, where he received his doctorate in history in 2014. He often lectures on queer history and was a consultant for the Kentucky LGBTQ+ Heritage Initiative, founded by the National Park Service. Coleman’s book, Anywhere, Together: A Queer History of Kentucky, is forthcoming from the University Press of Kentucky.