Wayne R. Dynes

Wayne R. Dynes (August 23, 1934 – late July 2021) was an American art historian, encyclopedist, and bibliographer. He was professor emeritus in the Art Department at Hunter College, where he taught from 1972 to 2005.

Dynes spent his early years in southern California, where he attended UCLA and received his B.A. in 1969. After extended sojourns in Italy and England, he settled permanently in Manhattan, where he obtained his Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. The subject of his dissertation was the eleventh-century illuminated Stavelot Bible from Belgium. His training as a medievalist provided the basic core of his college teaching, first at Columbia, then at Hunter College.

During the 1960s Dynes was a member of the Mattachine Society of New York. He was in Europe at the time of the Stonewall Uprising in Greenwich Village in June 1969. After returning in 1973 he collaborated with Jack Stafford, a librarian, to work on one of many bibliographies of gay studies. This interest ultimately yielded his ''Homosexuality: A Research Guide'' (1987), followed by his work as editor-in-chief of the two-volume ''Encyclopedia of Homosexuality'' (Garland, 1990). Provided by Wikipedia