Casa Susanna, an exhibition that brings together photographs and publications from a community of cross-dressers in the 1960s, is currently on display. This collection highlights the gatherings held at two modest resorts in New York City and the Catskill Mountains, run by Susanna Valenti and her wife, Marie Tornell. These locations provided safe spaces for guests to express their femme identities during a time of strict gender roles.
The exhibition features candid and performative snapshots rediscovered at a Manhattan flea market in 2004, known as the Casa Susanna photographs. Additionally, it includes issues of Transvestia magazine, which published these photographs along with fiction, poetry, makeup advice, clothing tips, and autobiographical essays from community members.
This period was marked by isolation and shame for many cross-dressers who led double lives as married men with careers. The exhibition sheds light on the types of women they aspired to embody—such as the “girl next door” or the respectable housewife—reflecting a middle-class ideal of femininity that was both freeing and restrictive. Casa Susanna provides insight into this pre-Stonewall scene and its relevance to transgender lives today.
Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Les Rencontres d’Arles in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition is supported by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc.
