The sexuality of America’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, has been scrutinized by historians for years.
Now, artist Sklyar Fein is delving even deeper into the possible queer identity of the late political figure through a large-scale art installation.
Titled “The Lincoln Bedroom,” the exhibition is currently running at the C24 Gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City through Dec. 21. The installation incorporates sight, sound and smell to recreate the aesthetics of the intimate bedroom Lincoln shared with Joshua Speed, the son of a wealthy plantation family.
“If you talk to Lincoln scholars, they’re happy to discuss the man’s same-sex bed sharing — quickly. They like to get it over with,” Fein told The Huffington Post. “You’ll notice that they like to dismiss it: just a couple of young men sharing a bed out of necessity. It was frontier times. People shared beds. Get over it... The truth is, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to ignore the fact that Lincoln liked sleeping with men. But why bother jumping?”
Written by James Nichols