About

Using archival documents, photography, original artifacts, dance, clothing design, and creative nonfiction, Warlé is a creative manifestation of the lives led by my distant cousins. The goal is twofold: to encourage others to explore their queer ancestry and to generate conversations about how we care for LGBTQ+ elders and refugees today. Warren Kronemeyer and Leon Ingall co-founded Warlé, a small business on Manhattan's Upper East Side specializing in antiques, contemporary objects, art framing, restoration, and interior decoration. Leon was a Jewish refugee and fashion designer who fled Bolshevik Russia, relocated to Weimar Berlin, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1940; Warren was a writer, journalist, antiques dealer, and an operative of the WWII-era U.S. Office of Strategic Services. After several decades together in New York, they left the city in 1980 and relocated to Townshend, Vermont and became beloved citizens of this rural community. The people of Townshend took good care of them at the end of their lives. They were, in the words of Armistead Maupin, “logical” family. The work of Warlé is to repair broken branches in our family trees, to graft new ones, and to think expansively about kinship and caregiving. Follow my research on Instagram @warleinc

- Andrew Ingall

Andrew Ingall has been working in arts, culture, and community engagement for over twenty years as a curator, scholar, writer, performer, and producer. He received a B.A. from Columbia College and an M.A. in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. His collaborators have included cultural workers, artists, scholars, faith leaders, activists, health care professionals, and funeral directors.

With a background in theater, performance, and museum studies, Andy has organized exhibitions and public programs for The Brooklyn Museum, Electronic Arts Intermix, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, Wave Hill, and other cultural institutions. His writing and research has appeared in Videofreex: The Art of Guerrilla Television (SUNY Press), Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, and other publications.

Andy is an Associated Artist at Culture Push, an organization that creates programs to nurture artists and other creative people approaching common problems through hands-on civic participation and imaginative problem-solving. He is also a past Fellow at LABA NY, a laboratory for Jewish culture based at Manhattan's 14th Street Y and part of a global cluster of hubs that includes Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Northern California.