In Memory of Fritz Lohman

Leslie Lohman and life partner Charles Leslie  (Source:Charlie T. Photography / Image posted at nypost.com)

NYC gay art gallery owner dies

By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press

via the Washington Examiner

NEW YORK — Fritz Lohman, who championed gay and lesbian artists and waged a battle to rezone what today is the city's artsy SoHo district, has died.

Lohman died Dec. 31, said Charles Leslie, his partner of 48 years. The cause of death was cardiac arrest.

In 1990, the two men established the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, a nonprofit art gallery on Wooster Street "to provide an outlet for art work that is unambiguously gay," according to its Web site.

The gallery mounts five or six major exhibits a year of works in all media, and houses a sizable permanent collection.

"When we first set up house, we became aware that many great artists were gay," said Leslie in a telephone intereview on Monday. "We noticed that a lot of them had amazing works of erotica and political and social imagery that resonated with the gay community."

They decided to exhibit some of those works in their SoHo loft in 1969-1970. Invitations were sent and phone calls were. They expected about 80 people, but "hundreds of people came," he said.

"Why should this art be hidden all the time," he said they asked themselves of the works that most art galleries deemed too controversial at the time. That question morphed into a "struggling" gallery on Broome Street, but it shut down in 1981 amid the turmoil of the AIDS crisis that resulted in fewer visitors to the gallery. In 1990, it reopened as the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation in the basement of a building the two men owned and two years ago it moved into the 3,600-square-foot Wooster Street space.

Leslie said he will continue to run the gallery.

"That's what Fritz would want. He was a continuer. He never stopped at anything," he said.

Lohman, avuncular, balding with soft, kind eyes, also ran a successful interior design business for 40 years, until 1987, that catered to a wealthy clientele that included Barbara Walters and the late French fashion designer Jacques Fath, Leslie said.

Four decades ago, the two men waged a legal battle with the city to rezone 12 SoHo square blocks from commercial to residential, Leslie said. In the end, he said their efforts resulted in 48 square blocks being rezoned into what is known today as SoHo.

At the same time, they joined the efforts to save the district's historic cast iron buildings.

"We fought an aggressive battle with the Landmarks Preservation Commission to declare SoHo a landmark because of its amazing assemblage of cast iron buildings," Leslie said. A section spanning from Crosby Street to West Broadway and Houston to Canal — where the cast iron buildings are concentrated — was eventually declared a landmark in 1973.

A small real estate company that the two men launched in 1969, buying up and selling nine buildings in which they retained commercial space, allowed them to invest in their other ventures.

Leslie said the art gallery "comes into the category of 'what we do for love.'"

He said Lohman will be remembered for his dry wit and "brilliant taste."

In addition to their SoHo apartment, they owned a 40-acre country home in Preston, Md., called Todds Wharf, and a place in Marrakesh, Morrocco.

"A big party" to celebrate Lohman's life will be held sometime in the spring at all three locations, Leslie said.

Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation: http://www.leslielohman.org