In a widely reported study earlier this year, researchers at Harvard Divinity School found that more and more religiously unaffiliated millennials are joining intentional communities, from CrossFit to dinner-party clubs, that provide the communal and ritual benefits of religion without the dogma or doctrine that many millennials find off-putting. Such a space also reflects a wider trend of non-explicitly “religious” spaces functioning as religions. The temple commemorates LGBTQ heroes, as well as those who were hurt or killed because of anti-LGBTQ violence. Guests can donate in exchange for a candle to light (donations go to a youth program at the LGBT Community Center of New York) and inscribe a guestbook to commemorate loved ones who have died due to complications from HIV/AIDS. Johnson, the black trans woman and activist who helped initiate the 1969 Stonewall riots. Here, they can reflect on the experiences of heroes and martyrs in their own tradition, following Wilde through his own “stations of the cross” just as a Christian might do in a more traditional church, engage in communal celebration, and mark important lifetime rituals: from birth to death.Īlong with Wilde, other figures depicted in the display include Alan Turing, the British pioneer of artificial intelligence who was chemically castrated after being convicted of “gross indecency” in the 1950s Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California before his assassination, and Marsha P. And although the Oscar Wilde Temple isn’t technically a religious worship space, it certainly provides a space for LGBTQ people - some of whom may have been excluded from traditional religious settings - to participate in acts and rituals that certainly qualify as religious. “McDermott used to say he wanted to make his own religion,” McGough told reporters Monday. What makes a religious space? The Oscar Wilde Temple embraces the question. In each panel, all of which are modeled after then-contemporary newspaper engravings of the trial, Wilde sports the gilded halo of Christian iconography.Įqual parts art project and ritualistic space, the temple, which will be open through December 2, is available to rent for gatherings both sacred (the aforementioned wedding, poetry readings, a planned discussion of queer theology) and profane (the temple’s curator, Alison Gingeras, jokingly suggested a séance to honor Wilde’s death day, November 30).īut is the Oscar Wilde Temple actually, well, a temple? The participatory nature of the duo’s art exhibit, as well as its Christian imagery and its relationship with the Church of the Village, reflects the porous boundaries between art, ritual, and religion.
#Oscar wilde gay pioneer trial#
The subject, however, is not.Īt the Oscar Wilde Temple, a religiously themed installation project by McDermott & McGough, the art-world tag of artists David McDermott and Peter McGough, the central statue and the figure of worship is of Wilde himself: the 19th-century Anglo-Irish novelist and playwright whose name has become synonymous with LGBTQ liberation.Ī series of paintings modeled after the traditional Christian stations of the cross - representing different moments in Jesus’s trial and crucifixion - tell the story of Wilde’s 1895 trial for “gross indecency” (i.e., homosexuality) and subsequent two-year imprisonment.
The chapel’s advertised uses - weddings, memorial services, contemplation - are likewise commonplace. The aesthetic - a neo-Gothic stained glass window, a devotional statue, a series of paintings depicting the life and suffering of a martyr - is perfectly familiar. Hidden in the basement of New York’s Church of the Village, a Methodist church in Greenwich Village, is an entirely unconventional worship space.
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