Nikki S. Lee

Artist Nikki S. Lee becomes friendly with her subjects and photographs herself among them, as she did with this group of skateboarders.

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Try to define what boys are made of, and the image you have may go well beyond traditional roles or behavior and even cross gender lines. This variegated view of adolescent male identity can comprise any, all or none of the following: brutality and fragility; preoccupations with "toys," physicality, appearance and performance; and such activities as raving, skateboarding and clowning around.

A new exhibition, "Will Boys Be Boys? Questioning Adolescent Masculinity in Contemporary Art," now through Jan. 8 at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, explores, deconstructs and redefines "boy-ness" as a socially determined identity. The traveling multimedia exhibition, organized by Independent Curators International of New York, features 48 works by 19 nationally known artists.

Andrea Inselmann, the museum's curator of modern and contemporary art, will lead a free "Art for Lunch" tour of the exhibition Nov. 10 at noon.

"I was working on a show entitled 'Bad Boys and Pretty Girls,' dealing with similar imagery, and then I came across this show that … focused on the masculine aspect of my idea," Inselmann says.

Filmmaker Larry Clark ("Kids") shows both the vulnerability and veneer of fame of then-teen actors Corey Haim, Leif Garrett and Kristy McNichol in his photographs. Anthony Giocolea, who is in his mid-30s, portrays himself in multiple images as a dozen teenaged private school students mugging for the camera in "Class Picture" (1999).

"There's lots of posing and acting going on in the show in a variety of ways, and there's a great deal of humor. Some of the work is just very funny," Inselmann says.

Adolescent masculinity, Inselmann says, has a more fluid definition today than 20 or 30 years ago, owing in part to strides in feminist and gender studies scholarship. So much so that the image of a young man can be extremely feminine, and a girl can be one of the boys. Artist Nikki S. Lee spends time getting to know -- and then photographs herself with -- different social groups, such as male skateboarders.

"She becomes almost a performance artist," Inselmann says. "It takes a lot of preparation and research to sort of slip into these roles that she takes on and then take the photographs, which are the end result of this project which can take months."

In conjunction with the exhibit, artist Chloe Piene will speak Nov. 5 at 4:30 p.m. before a public opening reception. Giocolea will speak Nov. 8 at 5:15 p.m. Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin, who call themselves collectively Type A, will give a talk Nov. 22 at 5:15 p.m.

Other artists or artist teams represented in the exhibition are Slater Bradley, Lilah Freedland, Tim Gardner, Luis Gispert, Janine Gordon, Ryan Humphrey, Matt Luem and Greg Fiering, Julia Loktev, Maria Marshall, Ryan McGinness, Jeff Reed, Tom Sachs, Dean Sameshima and Collier Schorr. "Will Boys Be Boys?" was curated by Shamim M. Momin of the Whitney Museum of American Art.