LGBTQ Curators at Museums and Art Galleries
There are several successful LGBTQ art and museum curators at prominent cultural institutions and art galleries around the world.
In essence, a curator is a keeper or guardian of important cultural heritage pieces, including collectibles, historic objects, art pieces, or scientific pieces. Curators thus represent important links between the past and today’s contemporary world. In this respect, they work very closely with archivists and librarians with a specializing similar to their field of study or expertise.
It is a curator’s responsibility to carefully assess the importance and relevance of pieces to the historic narrative of the subject matter. If relevant, they acquire the piece to add to a collection of similar pieces which collectively convey a specific story. Curators often are required to interpret the meaning of a specific piece in the context of a period of time, then catalogue it and prepare it for presentation to the public. To accomplish this requires a specialization in their field of study.
Given the historic context in which a curator works, you can see the relevance of having LGBTQ representation in this professional field. It is important that curators maintain a position of academic standing that puts them above bias and censorship in their work of revealing the true historical narrative to the public.
Curators have long played an important role within the LGBTQ community itself. Many exhibitions have been staged which relay the historical narrative of the emergence of the LGBTQ community within a specific community, region, or country. They have relied on material within LGBTQ archives to both uncover the story and convey it to their audience.
We have identified several LGBTQ individuals who are, or have been, prominent curators around the world. They hail from Germany, New Zealand, Great Britain, France, Canada, the United States, Spain, Poland, Singapore, and Australia.
- Klaus Biesenbach, United States, Museum of Modern Art and D.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
- Andrew Bolton, United States, Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Erica Brausen, Germany, Hanover Gallery
- Kelvin Browne, Canada, Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art
- Chandler Burr, United States, Museum of Art & Design
- Christopher Chippindale, Great Britain, Museum of Archeology and Anthropology
- Nicholas Cullinan, Great Britain, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Gallery, Metropolitan Museum
- Tania De Rozario, Singapore, Etiquette
- Joseph Galliano, Great Britain, Queer Britain Museum
- Ben Garcia, United States, American LGBTQ+ Museum
- J. B. Harter, United States, Historic New Orleans Collections
- Charles C. Hill, Canada, National Gallery of Canada
- SD Holman, Canada, Sum Gallery
- Frank Howarth, Australia, Australia Museum
- Stephan Jost, Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario
- Jonathan David Katz, United States, National Gallery
- Paweł Leszkowicz, Poland
- Jack Lohman, Great Britain, Royal BC Museum
- Neil MacGregor, Great Britain, British Museum
- Lizzie Marvelly, New Zealand, Director of the Rotorua Museum
- Fernand Legros, France, dealer
- Thierry-Maxim Loriot, Canada, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
- Mathew Marks, United States, Gallery Owner and curator
- Marc Mayer, Canada, National Gallery of Canada
- Margaret Mead, United States, American Museum of Natural History
- Tobias Meyer, Great Britain, Sothebys
- Timothy Naftali, Canada, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
- Rex Nan Kivell, New Zealand, Redfern Gallery
- Frank O'Hara, United States, Museum of Modern Art
- Ann Philbin, United States, Hammer Museum
- Mark Robbins, United States, Wexner Center for the Arts
- Rajendra Roy, United States, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)
- Augustin Perez Rubio, Spain, MALBA-Fondacion Constantini
- Trevor Thomas, Great Britain, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery
- Carlos Urroz, Spain, ARCOmadrid
- Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf, Germany, Grunderzeit Museum
- Monroe Wheeler, United States, Museum of Modern Art
