Collection: The Greer Lankton Collection

1958 – 2014
15000 Objects
The Greer Lankton Collection is an assemblage of materials comprising over 15,000 items, including artwork, ephemera, periodicals, photographs, photo albums, slides and negatives, journals and correspondence documenting the life and work of American artist, Greer Lankton.

The collection highlights how this seminal artist was relating to issues of sexuality, gender-identity, transfeminism, iconography, pop culture and consumerism, alongside battles with abuse, anorexia, drug addiction and the AIDS crisis which surrounded her.

The collection dates from the artist's birth in 1958 to untimely death in 1996, shortly after her installation, “It’s All About ME, Not You” opened at the Mattress Factory Museum. Thanks to the generosity of the Lankton family, both her installation and archive were donated to the Mattress Factory.

The Greer Lankton Collection is organized by material and is separated into eight series; Correspondence, Ephemera and Administrative Papers, Journals, Periodicals, Photo Albums, Photographs, Slides and Negatives, and Artwork.

Materials from the Greer Lankton Collection are made available for non-commercial, educational, and personal use only.

The Mattress Factory holds and enforces copyright of the materials in this collection. For materials which the Mattress Factory does not hold copyright, users are solely responsible for determining the copyright status of materials and obtaining permission to use material from the copyright holder. All requests for permission to publish must be submitted in writing to the Mattress Factory Archives.

Preferred citation: The Greer Lankton Collection, Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, PA.

In 2019, the Mattress Factory was awarded a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.