You can take a tour with a drag queen at Columbia Art Museum’s new Soviet-era exhibit
When the Columbia Museum of Art decided to open its latest exhibit on Soviet-era art, they didn’t go to an art historian to give the tours — they went to a drag queen.
Ebony Wood, known best for her energetic performances while wearing dazzling outfits in nightclubs, became the museum’s most popular tour guide.
“I’m used to being in crowded gay bars doing splits and putting on these raunchy shows for people who are getting drunk on a Wednesday night,” Ebony said. “It’s interesting to take my persona, my personality, and be in what is seen as such a serious environment.”
Event coordinators at the museum had been in touch with Wood to host an aerobics class in March, she said. One day after class, she mentioned that she had taken up learning Russian over the last year and a half to diminish any pandemic-induced boredom. Wood said she told them, “I speak Russian like a 3-year-old,” after they told her their next exhibit featured Russian artists.
“They kind of looked at each other and said, ‘It sounds like a natural thing for us to do an event around that,’ and I obviously agreed,” Wood said.
The tour, called Rasputin on the Ritz, takes museum guests back to Soviet-era Russia and features artists who were working under the political repression of the government at that time. It highlights the time and parallels the official art deemed “acceptable” that the artists had to work on during the day with what they could create when no one was watching. Some of the pieces featured in the exhibit have never been shown in America before, according to the museum’s website.
To prepare for the tours, Wood said, she had to delve into the history and political landscape of that era and learn about the struggles that these artists were facing during that time. She joked that she sat down in “typical Russian fashion” to study with a glass of vodka.
Any trepidation Wood had initially was washed away when she saw how quickly the first tour on July 25 had sold out.
“If they wanted an art history lesson, they would talk to an art historian, but they came to a drag queen,” Wood said. “They want to be entertained and have fun, and that’s what the event is about.”
And this, Wood said, is what makes the tour different and available to everyone.
“I think it makes it more accessible to people to be met by someone who says, ‘I don’t know a lot about this, but this exhibit is cool and I want to talk about it,’” Wood said. “I’m not a Russian history expert, I’m just someone who generally likes the topic and I think that makes everyone a little less nervous about going to a museum.”
The Rasputin’ on the Ritz tour for this Sunday is currently sold out, but museum guests can check the museum’s Facebook for upcoming events.
