From innovative new museums to revered institutions, there’s a lot of queer art to see this summer. Big names are getting retrospectives, while a renewed interest in the 1980s has brought a lot of HIV/AIDS-themed work to the forefront. Some of it is thought-provoking while some of it is just (just?) beautiful. Here are our picks for what to see and where to see it. We’ve cheated a little: a couple of these queer art venues have more than one LGBTQ2S+-filled special exhibit on view at the same time.
Dundee, Scotland
Tartan, Victoria & Albert Dundee (1 Riverside Esplanade, Dundee, U.K.).
When it opened in 2018, it was the V&A Dundee’s architecture by Kengo Kuma that grabbed the world’s attention. Now a museum-defining exhibition, aimed at capturing the history and the endless possibilities of the tartan fabric pattern, shows the intersection of Scotland with the world. With designs from Chanel, Dior, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Comme des Garçons and Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY, as well as art featuring the likes of actor Alan Cumming and drag queen Cheddar Gorgeous, this show is sure to get your kilt in a twist in the best possible way. Runs until January 14, 2024.
New York, New York
Coyote Park and Images on which to build 1970s–1990s, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (26 Wooster St., New York, New York).
This summer the world’s only dedicated LGBTQ2S+ art museum hosts two very different photo-based exhibitions. Images on which to build, 1970s-1990s documents and celebrates trans, queer and feminist grassroots organizing and their creations in the heady, sweaty days of the early queer liberation movement. Meanwhile, Coyote Park: I Love You Like Mirrors Do is a series of photos by the Two-Spirit, Indigenous (Yurok) Korean-American artist from Hawai’i, created as part of the museum’s Interventions series, which asks artists to create work in response to the collection. Images runs until July 30, 2023; Coyote Park runs until July 16, 2023.
Paris, France
Basquiat × Warhol, à quatre mains, Fondation Louis Vuitton (8 av. du Mahatma Gandhi, Paris).
The foundation’s 2018 Jean-Michel Basquiat show was such a hit, they’ve brought him back, this time paired with friend and sometimes collaborator Andy Warhol. Between 1984 and 1985, the two produced around 160 canvases together. This exhibition brings together more than 300 works and documents, including 80 of those jointly signed canvases. Works by Keith Haring (who gets his own blockbuster show this summer—scroll down for more info), Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf and Michael Halsband help round out this picture of the New York arts scene of the 1980s. Runs until August 28, 2023.
Toronto, Canada
Jónsi, Hrafntinna (Obsidian) and Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear, Art Gallery of Ontario (317 Dundas St. W., Toronto).
Member of the atmospheric Icelandic band Sigur Rós, Jónsi has been expressing himself more these days in the visual arts. His Hrafntinna (Obsidian) installation—a sound, smell and light recreation of being inside a volcano—is his first artwork being shown in a museum. It’s dark and moving. Meanwhile, the Museum of Modern Art has organized a retrospective of German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, who rose to fame documenting 1990s queer and rave culture. The exhibit, arriving in Canada, showcases Tillmans’ melancholic and thrilling images of nightlife, friends and scenesters, architecture and abstract images. Hrafntinna (Obsidian) runs until summer 2023; Tillmans runs until October 1, 2023.
London, U.K.
Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me, Tate Britain (Millbank, London).
The first-ever survey of the work of influential British artist and filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien charts 40 years of the artist’s career, including “Who Killed Colin Roach?” (1983), a response to the unrest following the death of a young man at the entrance to a police station, Territories (1984), which focuses on the Black British experience in the early 1980s and This is Not an AIDS Advertisement (1987), an abstract and sensual examination of how sexual desire survives through crisis and puritanism. Runs until August 20, 2023.
Stockholm, Sweden
Sleepless Nights—From the 1980s in the Moderna Museet Collection, Moderna Museet (Exercisplan 4, 111 49 Stockholm, Sweden).
Though not a show with an explicitly LGBTQ+ theme, its focus on the 1980s—the era of HIV/AIDS, the end of the Cold War and financial upheaval—makes it feel pretty queer. Prioritizing works by women, including Barbro Bäckström, Stina Ekman, Eva Löfdahl, Marika Mäkelä, Tracey Moffatt and Cindy Sherman, the show also features work by Torsten Andersson, Max Book, Daniel Buren, Pierre Lobstein, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol. Runs until January 14, 2024.
Los Angeles, California
Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody, The Broad (221 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles).
While Warhol and Basquiat share a show in Paris, their friend Keith Haring, who started off in the underground of New York’s 1980s graffiti-splattered street-art scene and whose iconic work is now plastered on T-shirts from Uniqlo and H&M, gets his own major exhibition. It’s actually Haring’s first-ever museum show in Los Angeles, with more than 120 artworks and archival materials. Runs until October 8, 2023.
Sydney, Australia
Absolutely Queer, Powerhouse Ultimo (500 Harris St., Sydney, New South Wales).
Sydney’s 2023 WorldPride celebrations may now be a fading (albeit delightful) memory, but even if you missed the party, this expansive curatorial testament to queer culture can be enjoyed until the end of the year. From installation and performance artists to video game developers, cartoonists and fashion designers, the exhibit is a snapshot of LGBTQ2S+ creativity and activism in Australia’s biggest city. Runs until December 2023.
