I am writing to express my unequivocal support for the preservation of Tom House, the home of the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles.
Tom House is not simply a building, nor is it merely a monument to one extraordinary artist. It is a living piece of queer cultural history, a place where art, sexuality, community, and resistance have coexisted for decades. At a time when so much queer history has been erased, sanitized, displaced, or simply allowed to disappear, the importance of preserving a place like Tom House cannot be overstated.
I have a long personal association with the Tom of Finland Foundation. I have participated in its Art & Culture Festival and other events, served as a judge for its Emerging Artist Competition, and my film Hustler White, co-directed with Rick Castro, has been screened as part of the Foundation’s programming. In 2020, I was deeply honoured to be inducted into the Tom of Finland Foundation’s Artist Hall of Fame for my artistic work and commitment to the art and culture of our community.
For me, Tom House has always represented something increasingly rare: a genuinely independent queer cultural space where sexually explicit art is not apologized for, euphemized, or relegated to the margins, but understood as an essential part of our artistic and cultural history.
The house itself is inseparable from that history. Tom lived and worked there during the last decade of his life, and the Foundation subsequently transformed it into an extraordinary archive, gathering and protecting erotic and queer art that other institutions were unwilling to preserve. During the AIDS crisis, it also became a gathering place and refuge for the community. Today it remains a home for artists, scholars, exhibitions, archives, and encounters that simply could not happen in the same way anywhere else.
Los Angeles has lost far too many spaces associated with its queer and underground histories. Tom House is irreplaceable. Once places like this disappear, they cannot be reconstructed by putting a plaque on a new condominium and declaring the history preserved.
Tom of Finland changed the way generations of gay men imagined themselves, transforming images that had been considered illicit or shameful into expressions of pride, pleasure, fantasy, and freedom. Tom House continues that legacy.
It must be protected.
Bruce LaBruce
Filmmaker, writer, photographer and artist
Tom of Finland Foundation Artist Hall of Fame, 2020
Toronto
Canada