Transitory Artifacts
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TRANS HIRSTORY IN 99 OBJECTS
Edited by David Evans Frantz, Christina Linden, and Chris E. Vargas
Hirmer Publishers. 304 pages, $40.

TRANS HIRSTORY in 99 Objects has been my most popular coffee table book this summer. It has beautiful typography and color plates. It has the heft of art books by Taschen, but it’s published by another German art publisher, Hirmer Verlag, in conjunction with the Museum of Trans Hirtory and Art (motha). And it’s the catalog for an exhibition that has yet to happen! The virtual museum is something of an aspirational institution founded in 2013 by artist Chris E. Vargas. As the clever introductory essays point out, motha exists as a virtual collection awaiting an architectural embodiment. Meanwhile, motha has produced a series of small exhibits at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives (USC), at New York’s New Museum, at the Portland Art Museum, at the Oakland Museum of California, and at university galleries in Seattle, Boston, and Victoria (BC).

Vernon Rosario, a historian of science and a child psychiatrist, is an associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA.