“Oscar Wilde and Wilhelm von Gloeden: Marvellous Boys”

Works by two prominent and mutually admiring figures of 19th-century gay culture—the Irish writer, Oscar Wilde (1854-1909), and the German photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931)—are brought together in a show that meditates upon the intersection of homoeroticism, classical antiquity and the desire for eternal youth. Von Gloeden’s pastoral nudes of young men scantily accessorized with Greco-Roman motifs (laurel wreathes, togas, amphorae), taken during the artist’s 1877 sojourn to Sicily, are presented alongside a copy of Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which the titular gentleman, in a sort of deal with the devil, remains forever young while his portrait ages in his stead.