Wayne Koestenbaum

Essayist, cultural critic, and poet Wayne Koestenbaum is one of the most energetic and original writers working today.  With books like The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire and Hotel Theory, he has made an unparalleled contribution to the writing of queer cultural history.  Gertrude Stein was a key figure in that history as well as in the development of modern art in early-20^th century Paris.  For this year’s Phyllis Wattis Distinguished Lecture, SFMOMA has commissioned Koestenbaum to write a new piece related to the exhibition The Steins Collect; his topic: the caption.