Art Historians from the LGBTQ Community
Throughout history, the LGBTQ community has used art to portray its identity. As Rishika Aradhya has pointed out in her 2023 article in Harpers Bazaar magazine, tracing queer art history is still quite nascent. Still, it is growing at a rapid pace, with several historians pointing out homosexual symbolisms in many different paintings.
Perhaps the most notable study of the subject comes with David Whitney's "Gay and Lesbian Studies in Art History", co-published as an edited volume and as a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality in 1994. This introduced queer art history as a subject in its own right and a discrete component of queer theory.
Art historians can play a number of roles, from critic to biographer, patron to documentarian. We owe a great deal of our knowledge and insight into artists, the milieu in which they lived and worked, and their artistic output from the work of art historians. For the LGBTQ community, art historians teach us about our cultural past. They help empower us in our journey for equality and respect.
There are several LGBTQ individuals who have made their mark as Art Historians. Notable among them are Canada's Charles C. Hill and Neil MacGregor from Great Britain. A complete list follows.
Australia
- Bille Brown, University of Queensland
Canada
- Charles C. Hill, National Gallery of Art
Germany
- Johann Joachim Winckelmann, founder of the field of Archeology
Great Britain
- Neil MacGregor, Humboldt Forum, British Museum, National Gallery
- Walter Pater, art critic
- Steven Runciman, Istanbul University
- Trevor Thomas, Director of the City of Leicester Museums and Art Gallery
- Simon Watney
Poland
- Paweł Leszkowicz, University of Sussex
United States
- Whitney Davis, University of California, Berkeley
- Wayne R. Dynes, City University of New York
- Harmony Hammond, University of Arizona, Tucson
- Jonathan David Katz, State University of New York at Buffalo
- James M. Saslow, City University of New York
See Also
- Prominent Art and Book Dealers Who Are LGBTQ
- Art and Culture Critics Who Identify as LGBTQ
- LGBTQ Librarians and Archivists
- Prominent LGBTQ Portrait Painters and Photographers
- Prominent Biographers Who are LGBTQ
- LGBTQ Photographers
- LGBTQ Sculptors
- Notable LGBTQ Landscape Painters, Architects and Photographers