58. (Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx)

Provided with a generous grant from a private foundation, an artist creates a realistic, larger-than-life-size marble sculpture of herself and her life-partner embracing in bed, naked except for a sheet artfully draped across their midsections. The pose is inspired by Le Sommeil, Courbet’s scandalous painting of lesbian reverie, which itself was inspired by Baudelaire’s equally scandalous poem, “Femmes Damnées (Delphine et Hippolyte).” Once finished, the sculpture, which the artist titles Memorial to a Marriage, is transported to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx where it is permanently installed on a plot where she and her lover plan to be buried. At this time same-sex marriage is illegal in all 50 States. “What I can’t have in life,” the artist explains in an interview, “I will have forever, in death.”

(Patricia Cronin, Deborah Kass)