Under Cover: J. C. Leyendecker and American Masculinity

J. C. Leyendecker was a gay illustrator and commercial artist who helped shape American visual culture in the first three decades of the 20th century. Almost from the start of his career in 1893, he specialized in depicting men in such printed media as advertisements, magazines, books, and college posters. In 1913 New York’s Sun newspaper declared him the “champion” of men in art. His illustrations often exhibited a range of masculine types—the soldier, the sailor, the athlete, and the aesthete—but were almost always white men. His diverse representations of male interactions and physicality sometimes had homoerotic undertones.

This exhibition features Leyendecker’s paintings, ephemera, and a multimedia presentation of queer New York culture during his heyday. It considers Leyendecker’s imagery as artistic manifestations of his era’s shifting definitions of masculinity. His illustrations both shaped and reflected the spirit of his time, especially its gender, sexual, and racial norms. Focusing on these facets of his vast body of work, the exhibition broadens our understanding of American popular culture.

Mr. Albrecht developed the show’s themes, selected artifacts, wrote exhibition text, and worked with the design team.


Press
More than 40 articles and mentions from an international array of media outlets, including the New York Times, Art News, Women’s Wear Daily, Gay & Lesbian Review, Time Out, Fast Company, El Pais, NBC News, CBS 2, and the Guardian. Social media coverage on sites such as Instagram and TikTok.

“a fascinating show”
Blake Gopnik, New York Times, June 29, 2023

Credits
Under Cover is organized by the New-York Historical Society from the collection of the National Museum of American Illustration, Newport, RI.
Coordinating curator: Rebecca Klassen, N-YHS curator of material culture
Content advisors: Elspeth Brown, Monica Miller, Michael Murphy
Exhibition designer: Sofia Lin
Graphic designer: Ivan Skrtic
Photographer: New-York Historical Society

50 at 50

Co-curated with Thomas Mellins

This online exhibition celebrated the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s 50th anniversary. It comprised a specially commissioned film offering an overview of the Conservancy’s achievements; an illustrated timeline exploring New York City in the 1970s when the Conservancy was founded; and, bringing together texts and images, an interactive compendium of 50 of the organization’s most significant successes in preserving and protecting the architecture that helps make New York unique. A city-wide festival of lectures, concerts, and other events accompanied the online exhibition.

Mr. Albrecht worked with co-curator Thomas Mellins to conceive the exhibition’s structure and themes, select historic images, write text, collaborate with the web design team, and plan events.


Press
Coverage in Architect magazine

Credits
Commissioned photographer (except where noted): Noël Sutherland
Branding web designer: SJI Associates

Up Against the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster

Co-edited with Jessica Lacher-Feldman and William M. Valenti, M.D.

This 232-page book complemented the exhibition Up Against the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster, which was presented at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York. The book featured scholarly essays and a portfolio of nearly 150 examples of visually arresting and socially meaningful posters. Some of these posters were accompanied by commentary written by an international roster of designers, activists, researchers, policymakers, and social scientists, among others.

The posters, spanning the years from 1982 to the present, showed how social, religious, civic, and public health agencies have addressed the controversial, often contested terrain of the HIV/AIDS pandemic within the public realm. Organizations and creators tailored their messages to audiences, both broad and very specific, and used a wide array of strategies, employing humor, emotion, scare tactics, simple scientific explanations, sexual imagery, and many other methods to communicate powerfully and effectively.

>See exhibition


Credits
Editors: Donald Albrecht, Jessica Lacher-Feldman, and William M. Valenti, M.D.
Designer: Marnie Soom/RIT Press
Publisher: RIT Press

Up Against the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster

Up Against the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster offered 165 examples of visually arresting and socially meaningful posters, taken from more than 8,000 held in the collection in the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries’ Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation.

The posters, spanning the years from 1982 to the present, showed how social, religious, civic, and public health agencies have addressed the controversial, often contested terrain of the HIV/AIDS pandemic within the public realm. Organizations and creators tailored their messages to audiences, both broad and very specific, and used a wide array of strategies, employing humor, emotion, scare tactics, simple scientific explanations, sexual imagery, and many other methods to communicate powerfully and effectively. A timeline of AIDS history and newly commissioned video interviews with local residents discussing the disease’s impact on them and their community complemented the posters. Accompanied by a 232-page catalog.

Mr. Albrecht developed the show’s themes, selected artifacts, wrote exhibition text, and worked with the design team.

>See exhibition catalog


Press
Coverage on WXXI News and in Plus magazine.

Credits
Exhibition and graphic designer: Travis Johansen/Memorial Art Gallery
Photographer: Andy Olenek

Designing Duo: Tom Lee and Sarah Tomerlin Lee

Co-curated with Thomas Mellins, with research assistance by Anne Regan

This exhibition celebrated Tom Lee (1910-1971) and Sarah Tomerlin Lee (1910-2001), husband and wife for more than three decades, who left a distinctive mark on 20th- century American design. He worked as a theater designer, a department store display director, and chiefly an interior designer, and she was a magazine editor, a department store executive, an advertising copywriter, and ultimately a renowned interior designer. But they were more than simply successful individuals; a designing duo, they sometimes shared clients and, more significantly, shared expertise and experience, culminating in an influential synergy.

As tastemakers, the Lees promoted a sophisticated blend of traditional and contemporary aesthetics—by turns decorative and minimalist—which Sarah called “romantic modernism.” Their work powerfully reflected larger social and cultural forces, from the advance of middle-class consumer culture to the rise of women in the workplace. They used design as an agent of American diplomacy during the Cold War, positioned American fashion on the international stage, and helped make historic preservation an indispensable economic engine of urban redevelopment.

Mr. Albrecht worked with co-curator Thomas Mellins to develop the show’s themes, select artifacts, write exhibition text, and work with the design team.


Press
Coverage in Women’s Wear Daily.

Credits
Exhibition and graphic designer: Darling Green
Photographer: Rob Stephenson

The Russel and Mary Wright Design Gallery

The only permanent, in-depth public exhibition of the Wrights’ product design anywhere, this exhibition told the story of how the husband-and-wife team shaped modern American lifestyle – from early experiments in spun aluminum in the 1930s and the colorful rounded forms of American Modern dinnerware to Japanese-inspired patterns and textures decades later. The Design Gallery of over 200 objects was in dialogue with Wright’s masterful estate, Manitoga, and sought to complement the visitor’s tour of the site with an installation both informative and experiential. The beauty of the Wrights’ explorations of form, color, and nature surrounded visitors on the gallery walls, while a central timeline display offered them an opportunity to understand the full trajectory of the Wrights’ remarkable careers as 20th-century domestic innovators. The state-of-the-art exhibition space connected to the main house museum and to an exterior terrace with stunning views of the surrounding woodland landscape.

Working with executive director Allison Cross and director of collections Vivian Linares, Mr. Albrecht developed the exhibition’s themes, selected artifacts, and wrote exhibition text.


Credits
Exhibition and graphic designer: Studio Joseph
Exhibition lighting designer: Anita Jorgensen
Photographer: Michael Biondo

Bob Crewe: Sight and Sound, Compositions in Art and Music

This book was the first publication to explore both the extraordinary musical life and the remarkable paintings and sculptures of one of America’s greatest-ever songwriters. Best known for having written and produced some of the seminal records of midcentury popular culture, from “Big Girls Don’t Cry” for the Four Seasons to “Lady Marmalade” for LaBelle, Bob Crewe was a multifaceted artist for whom a passion for painting and the visual arts provided a lifelong counterbalance to music. Mr. Albrecht’s introductory essay tied together the many complementary facets of Crewe’s personal and creative lives, including his queer sexuality and complex relationship to the era’s gay culture.


Press
Articles in Variety and ARTDAILY.COM

Credits
Editor: Jacob Lehman

Tidal Basin Ideas Lab

Co-curated with Thomas Mellins

This online exhibition showcased proposals from five landscape architecture firms – DLANDstudio, GGN, Hood Design Studio, James Corner Field Operations, and Reed Hilderbrand – that reimagine the future of the iconic Tidal Basin in Washington, DC. Now endangered, the Basin is home to monuments including the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, as well as 3,000 cherry trees that serve as the backdrop for a popular festival each spring. Comprised of newly commissioned films, digital animations, and photographs, the exhibition invited the public to explore the histories and challenges of the Tidal Basin and share feedback on ideas for the evolution of this important American landscape.


Press

Coverage on National Public Radio, architecturalrecord.com, architecturaldigest.com, and fastcompany.com


Credits

Co-curator: Thomas Mellins
Web designer: MGMT.design
Web developer: Gordils & Willis

Cool Is Everywhere

This book was a photographic survey of adaptive reuse design in 14 mid-sized American cities that have experienced dramatic revivals, including Richmond, Virginia; Oakland, California; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mr. Albrecht’s introduction explored how the vibrancy of today’s smaller cities rests not only on broad cultural and economic factors, but also on three particular features: the preservation of historic buildings and places; the reclamation of degraded landscapes; and the fostering of small-sale industries described by hip city-dwellers as “maker culture.”


Credits
Photographer: Michel Arnaud
Writers: Michel Arnaud with Jane Creech
Designer: Danielle Youngsmith

Cycling in the City

Co-curated with Evan Friss

Cycling in the City traced the bicycle’s transformation of urban transportation and explored the extraordinary diversity of cycling cultures in the city, past and present. Featuring more than 150 artifacts, including 14 bicycles and cycling apparel, films, and graphic displays, the exhibition revealed the complex, creative, and often contentious relationship between New York and the bicycle ever since the first “velocipede” appeared on the city’s streets in 1819, exactly two centuries ago. Today, the bicycle continues to play an increasingly important role in New York City life, shaping what it means to live in a modern metropolis. Bicycles affect how we work, how we spend our leisure time, even how we define ourselves. The complex dance of cars, pedestrians, and bicycles continues to evolve, as the city promotes ambitious visions for a sustainable city and New Yorkers continue to seek simple, speedy, healthy, and environmentally-friendly ways to move about.

Working with co-curator Evan Friss, Mr. Albrecht developed the show’s themes, selected artifacts, wrote exhibition text, identified and worked with the design team.


Press

Coverage in the New York Times, Metropolis, Curbed, and featured as a segment of WNET/Channel 13’s “Sunday Arts” television program

“…an impressively comprehensive and exceptionally timely exploration of the bicycle’s impact on Gotham…” Dante A. Ciampaglia, Metropolis, March 21, 2019


Credits

Exhibition and graphic designer: Pure+Applied
Photographer: Rob Stephenson