McDermott&McGough's Oscar Wilde Temple Opens in New York

On September 11, 2017, the artist duo David McDermott (b. 1952, Los Angeles) and Peter McGough (b. 1958, Syracuse, NY) unveiled the Oscar Wilde Temple, a public art project celebrating sexual equality. The installation is housed within the Russell Chapel of The Church of the Village, a Methodist church in New York's Greenwich Village historically supportive of LGBTQ rights. The temple transforms the chapel into a Victorian-era environment, transporting visitors to 1882, the year Oscar Wilde (1864-1900) toured America. Wilde, an Irish writer and poet, is revered as an icon in the fight for homosexual rights for refusing to conceal his sexuality despite facing harsh prison sentences. The project was developed over two decades in collaboration with The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center of New York. Once opened, the temple will host private ceremonies, including same-sex weddings, as well as religious and secular public functions. The inauguration coincides with a major retrospective of McDermott&McGough at the Dallas Contemporary Museum in Texas, opening October 1, 2017. In 2018, the Oscar Wilde Temple will relocate to Studio Voltaire in London. The duo, known for their "time experiments" since 1980, consistently blur temporal boundaries across photography, painting, and sculpture, often backdating their works to reject contemporary and future aesthetics in favor of a spiritual, timeless artistic experience.