The Im o ance of Pa icia C onin'
Memo ial o a Ma iage
Feb a 26, 2021
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The matter of representation has been explored by numerous
artists, especially the ones belonging to social groups that were or
still are exposed to oppression such as the queer community.
Despite the fact things have changed since the 1969 Stonewalls
Riots, the American society did not recognize LGBTQ+ people
legally in terms of their right to practice marriage until 2015.
The struggle to earn rights any person should be eligible to has
been decades-long and caused different artists to articulate thesituation through their work. The most illustrious example thatmarks an array of emotions related to systematic oppression andcritical of the heteronormative gaze is the sculpture
titled Memorial to a Marriage by the acclaimed American
multimedia artist Patricia Cronin.
The radiating and almost haunting work featuring two naked
female figures embracing in draped bedsheet, currently on
display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow,
acts as a timeless reminder of the rigidness and genuine
homophobia inscribed in the canon of traditional sculpture making.
Aside from portraying a same-sex relationship (of Cronin and herpartner Deborah Kass, also an accomplished visual artist), it seems
that the work still evokes the same controversy for the viewer as it
did at the time of its creation.

Patricia Cronin - Subverting The CanonN a m e ly, P a t r i c i a C r o n i n c a m e t o p r o m i n e n c e i n t h eearly-1990s for the way she approached themes such as femalesensuality and eroticism explored through photography. Her career
started developing while working for the Anne Frank Stichting(Foundation) in Amsterdam, where the artist became aware of thefemale absence, something that was to become a leading thread inher work. Over the years, Cronin's conceptual practice spanned toother media as she addressed gender, class, and sexuality with anemphasis on feminist art history, lesbian visibility, marriage
equality, and international rights of women.

By appropriating traditional patterns of art-making andrecontextualizing them in regards to the mentioned subjects,
Cronin subverts the representational cannons that stood at thecore of Western art history.

The Context Of The Work
Memorial to a Marriage was made in 2002, at a time same-sex
marriage was still illegal in the United States of America. The
only way Cronin and Kass could be recognized legally as partners
was via wills or health care provisions that would only be valid in
the case of one’s death.
To articulate the fact their relationship is recognized only
postmortem, in 2002 Cronin initially made this sculpture inmarble and installed it as a personal burial landmark inWoodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. This particular
gesture expressed the genuine feeling of sorrow that numerous
LGBTQI+ people feel in their everyday lives, as they remain
institutionally segregated and therefore unable to achieve equal
rights as all the other citizens. Cronin once underlined thesymbolic meaning of her sculpture:

The statue addresses issues of lesbian invisibility, gay marriage, loveand loss, power, and status. In this sculpture, I chose a nationalist
form – nineteenth-century American Neoclassical sculpture – toaddress what I consider a federal failure. In death, I make official my"marriage" which is still not legal while we are alive.

The Significance of Memorial to a Marriage
In July 2011, same-sex marriage became legal in the state ofNew York, and the two artists married the same day. That year in
September, the original sculpture was replaced by a bronze
version to protect the marble from air pollution. It still stands atthe Woodlawn Cemetery as the first and only Marriage Equality
Monument in the world.
The version held at Glasgow Museums was cast by the artist fromthe original marble sculpture (though it is a smaller two-thirdscale). In 2009, Memorial to a Marriage was part of theexhibition sh[OUT] that explored lesbian, gay, bisexual, and intersex
human rights, and right after it was installed at Kelvingrove Art
Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.
Since then, Cronin remains active with the display andinterpretation of her sculpture and gave full support to Glasgow
Museums' initiative to interpret and unravel LGBTQ+ histories
within their collection. More recently, Memorial to a Marriage wasincluded in a new online school topic 'LGBTQ+ Histories andExperiences' organized by Glasgow Museums.
Memorial to a Marriage excels the way Cronin uses art to mediatesocially relevant subjects regarding sexuality and gender.
Furthermore, she doesn’t just appoint the message, but rather
undertakes a subversive method by "queering" the conventional
representational modes typical for Western art. This emotional,tender, and finely crafted sculpture stands proudly in the highranks of artworks that perfectly emphasized the issues of LGBTQ+
visibility, activism, and human rights to broader audiences.
Featured image: Patricia Cronin - Memorial To A Marriage, 2002. Carrara marble,overlie size. © Patricia Cronin, courtesy of Artists Rights Society (ARS).

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