Robert (Bob) Morgan
A second-generation Kentucky artist and LGBTQ activist, Robert (Bob) Morgan lives in Lexington. His work is represented in public and private collections throughout the region. He’s also the co-founder with Jonathan Coleman of the Faulkner Morgan Archive.
Robert began making art at an early age with his mother, a self-taught artist. As a teenager, he honed his creative identity under the influence of his mentor and “gay dad” Henry Faulkner and his “gay mom” Sweet Evening Breeze.
Drawing additional inspiration from the pop culture, musicians, artists, and art house movies of the 1970s–’80s, Robert developed a radical style of drag and performance art. A departure from the old guard of debutante gowned-and-gloved female impersonators, Robert’s style of drag embraced gender fluidity (including body and facial hair) and rejected fake breasts and “tucking.” His drag personas were a mix of carnivalesque, ethereal, and otherworldly beings—with a punk rock edge.
Today, Robert primarily works in the mediums of photography and mixed-media sculpture. As Henry encouraged, he “saved the seeds,” and now he tells his own stories, and those of others—friends, marginalized queer youth, addicts—through his art.
The Robert Morgan Collection is a group of photographs and ephemera that belonged to Robert Morgan, a queer man and artist from Lexington, Kentucky.
These pieces encompass his life, and document, especially well, Lexington’s gay history—a topic of importance for Morgan. Many pieces in the collection are from the collections of other, older, gay men, notably Henry Faulkner and John Warner, who entrusted the pieces to Morgan’s care. This collection also holds the Pagan Babies photographs by John Ashley. This is FMA's first collection.
