With Pride Month now upon us, festivities across the United States will create safe spaces while celebrating the lives and journeys of LGBTQ+ individuals everywhere. In addition to the countless Pride parades and festivities, queer creators and their art will also be centered this year – many art galleries, museums and other art spaces will be staging amazing art exhibitions, movie screenings and more throughout the month of June. Here are some of the best art events to catch.
Divine Queerness
Centering around healing journeys, this exhibition at the Center – which celebrates its 40th year supporting LGBTQ+ community in New York City – brings together the work of seven artists. It includes the New York City downtown artist Lola Flash, originally active in Act Up in the 1980s, whose art sits at the intersection of race, sexual identity, ageing and social justice activism. Also on view is Mexican artist Gabriel García Román, whose vivid multimedia art presents layers of queer identity on individual portraits.
Pride at Mia
The Minneapolis Institute of Art offers a variety of events to bring Pride to museumgoers. Festivities kick off on 2 June with a gathering in the park capped off by a screening of Kiki, seen by many critics as a sequel of sorts to the landmark documentary Paris Is Burning, updated for an era of Black Lives Matter and renewed focus on trans rights. Another must-see event is the 22 June Pride Panel and Activations, featuring local artists including Kehayr Brown-Ransaw, Trista Marie McGovern, Julia Starr, giving them space to share details of the intersection of their artistic practices and queer identities.
Pride Not Prejudice
A group show of 28 LGBTQ+ California artists, Pride Not Prejudice is the jewel in the Sausalito Art Center’s Pride festivities. The show is headlined by Homosocial, a project by artist Brian Van Camerik in which he takes photos of same-gendered couples and displays them in various forms, including homemade reliquaries, offering a deep dive into the many layers of queer relationships. The show also offers contributions from the Bay Area mixed media artist Dianne Hoffman, whose intricate boxes showcase repurposed and salvaged objects, and Ajuan Mance, whose artist practice draws from cartoons and breaks down stereotypes around Black individuals.
Pride: In Retrospect
The Newport Art Museum offers audiences a photographic journey through decades of the battle for civil rights for queer Americans. The exhibit offers special focus on the origins and timeline precipitating the Stonewall uprising of 1969 – largely credited with launching the modern fight for equality in the LGBTQ+ community – and the first Queer Liberation March of 1970, which marked the first anniversary of Stonewall and is widely known as the first annual June Pride parade. Images on display include activists marching at the 1980 New York Pride Parade, a memorial to the Pulse nightclub atrocity, and the historic Stonewall Inn.
Rainbow on the Eastside
Seattle’s third annual Rainbow on the Eastside LGBTQ+ art extravaganza will take over Centro Cultural Mexicano’s Mi Casa location and its main office throughout the month. It welcomes a diverse group of over a dozen new and part artists. Newcomers include the queer Latina Anaïsysiria, whose work is typified by vibrant colors and large, bold shapes; Ariel Mei, a queer Chinese American artist whose practice centers on the beauty of the ocean and is informed by her pursuit of scuba diving; and Théo Nguyen, a queer Vietnamese American artist working in watercolors, gouache, pencils and the iPad app Procreate.
Take Pride! A Retrospective of LGBTQ+ Life in South Florida
Fort Lauderdale’s Take Pride! offers a photographic exhibit during Pride month chronicling the struggle for equal rights in south Florida, as well as the development of the thriving LGBTQ+ community in the area, covering the 1940s through the present. On view of Galleria Fort Lauderdale, the show of photographs, video, archival costumes and more brings together pieces from the Stonewall Museum, the World Aids Museum, Key West Art & Historical Society and others. It includes a screening of the award-winning short film Open Dialogues, an oral history documenting voices from the LGBTQ+ community.
Pride at Whitney
New York’s Whitney Museum offers multiple special events centering queer art and culture. On 5 June it honors the release of the HBO documentary The Stroll – chronicling the lives of the trans women of color who helped shape the city’s Meatpacking District – with an after-hours party following the screening of the movie at Gansevoort Plaza. On 9 June, the museum opens its doors to queer teens for a special evening of festivities, while on 17 June the Whitney welcomes The Piers Project for a special night of queer dance. And throughout the month, walking tours led from the Whitney will explore the queer history of the neighborhood around the museum.
WeHo Pride Arts Festival
West Hollywood’s signature Pride celebration offers a month-long arts festival with exhibitions, marketplaces, performances and more. The digital art Angelic Troublemakers Exhibition runs all month at the West Hollywood library, while the Indigenous Korean American transgender artist Coyote Park shows their work at the One Gallery. Literary series WeHo Reads offers a night of literature on 14 June, featuring the writers Kamden Hilliard, K-Ming Chang, Golden and Natalie Wee, while 17 June offers the LGBTQ+ craft market Beautiful Things at Plummer Park Community Center.
The month is capped by a queer book bazaar on 24 June, with numerous vendors and performances.
