UN-Hung Heroes of the Met Museum - A virtual tour

Learn about the fascinating history of the male...ahem...in art on this fun and interesting 75 minute Zoom tour with Professor Andrew Lear!

Cost: $10. Please note that this fee helps keep our small business going during the crisis so we can get up and running right away when it is safe to bring people together again in person.

Tickets: unhungtoursept2020.eventbrite.com

Nowadays people seem to consider the size of certain male body parts terribly important. The subject even came up in the presidential campaign, as absolutely nobody has forgotten, and ads about whether “size matters” are a dime a dozen. And yet when we go to the art museum, the guys without clothes are distinctly below average real-life size.

Have you ever wondered why that is? Were men really smaller once upon a time? Or did they prefer it for aesthetic reasons? Some other reason? Ever since Professor Lear was interviewed on this very subject on NPR's Studio360, people have been asking us to give a tour about it, a tour that explains why the world’s art museums are full of unhung heroes.

So here it is. On this fun and informative Zoom tour (75 minutes, with Q&A) follow the theme of the n*ked male around the museum. Learn about the ideals of Greek culture and how they have influenced the Western artistic tradition. And discover the contrasting cases as well—cases that exaggerate the other way…. You’ll come away with a whole new understanding of art, and maybe even of size.

More about our speaker:

Professor Andrew Lear combines a love of travel with a passion for gay history, and he brings both of those attributes to Oscar Wilde Tours.

Professor Lear holds a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from UCLA. He has published a widely praised book on male-male love in ancient Greek art, as well as a number of important scholarly articles in this area. Indeed he is generally considered one of the foremost experts on same-sex love in the ancient world, but his interest in gay history extends to other key periods, such as fin-de-siècle England, Renaissance Italy, and medieval Japan—places and periods that we will explore at Oscar Wilde Tours.

A beloved teacher at Harvard, Columbia and NYU, Professor Lear won the Harvard Certificate for Excellence in Teaching four times. He has taught a wide variety of courses in Classics, history, art history, and gender studies—as well as Italian and French language classes.

His courses on sexuality in the ancient world have been particularly popular. Many years after graduating, students still take the time to let him know how much they appreciated his personal warmth, his passion for teaching, and the sense of fun that he brings to his classes.

Professor Lear brings all those qualities to Oscar Wilde Tours, along with twenty years of experience organizing and leading group tours. With his vast cultural background, his detailed knowledge of gay history and his long experience of travel, Professor Lear strives to provide our guests with a vacation that is intellectually stimulating, culturally rewarding and, above all, fun!

Read Professor Andrew Lear’s official Wikipedia biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lear