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Home>LGBTQ+ Art & Artists in Our Collection

Explore artists and artworks representing the queer community. From Andy Warhol to Zanele Muholi, discover the LGBTQ+ pioneers in our collection who have left their mark on art history.

On this page: Highlights, Artist Spotlights, Explore More Queer Artists, Artle, Educator Resources, Exhibitions, and Events.

Highlights from Our Collection

LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

David Hockney, Stanley Baden, James Hirahara, Stephanie Wagner, Gemini G.E.L., Above and Beyond [special proof], started 1993, published 1994, screenprint on Arches 88 wove paper [special proof], Gift of Gemini G.E.L. and the Artist, in honor of Andrew Robison, 2016.146.20
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Allen Ginsberg, Keith Haring visiting his Pop Shop on Lafayette Street September 23, 1989., 1989, gelatin silver print, Gift of Gary Davis, 2017.165.37
Four deep, three-dimensional letters spell out the word AMOR in this free-standing sculpture, with the A and M stacked on top of the O and R to create a square on a low black platform. The letters are coral red with butter-yellow undersides. The elongated, oval-shaped opening within the circular letter O is angled 45 degrees, toward the M at the upper right. We stand slightly to the left in this photograph so we can see the deep sides of the letters. The sculpture is displayed out-of-doors with trees and a tall black fence in the background and plantings around the base.
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Robert Indiana, AMOR, conceived 1998, fabricated 2006, polychrome aluminum, Gift of Simon and Gillian Salama-Caro in memory of Ruth Klausner, 2012.27.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Scott Burton, Rock Settee, 1988, granite, Gift of the Collectors Committee, 1988.68.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Nan Goldin, Christmas at The Other Side, Boston, 1972, gelatin silver print, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2008.30.16
A man’s face printed in hot pink and banana yellow against a black background is repeated four times in this square silkscreen painting. The portraits are arranged in a grid of two by two. The man has a mop of spiky, unruly hair, heavy black brows, and a wide nose. His lips are set in a line over a rounded chin. Each one shows the man with a slightly different expression, some with his chin pulled back and others are straight on, but all look steadily at us with black eyes. The pink and yellow faces overlap but are out of alignment in each portrait. Pink and yellow edges surround each black square.
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1986, synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, Gift of the Collectors Committee, 2000.28.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Diane Arbus, Neil Selkirk, Female impersonator with jewels, N.Y.C. 1958, 1958, printed 1975, gelatin silver print, Gay Block Fund, 2006.91.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, Clasped Hands of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, model 1853, bronze, Gift in honor of Margaret and Raymond Horowitz, 2005.41.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Lola Álvarez Bravo, Frida Kahlo, c. 1944, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Mr. Robert Lennon and Mr. Ramon Osuna in Memory of Gene Baro.), 2015.19.4322
Three rows of six horizontal, rectangular canvases, each painted a single, saturated color, hang in a widely spaced grid against a three-story gray stone wall in this photograph. Moving from our left to right, the canvases in the top row are carrot orange, pine green, royal blue, canary yellow, marigold orange, and azure blue. The middle row has panels in marine blue, amethyst purple, shamrock green, soot black, vivid red, and rust brown. The bottom row canvases are banana yellow, black, coral red, midnight blue, emerald green, and orchid purple. The smaller, rectangular stones in the wall behind the panels are also laid horizontally, and they vary from silvery white to smoke gray.
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Ellsworth Kelly, Color Panels for a Large Wall, 1978, oil on canvas, Purchased with funds provided by The Glenstone Foundation, Mitchell P. Rales, Founder, 2005.87.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Wolfgang Tillmans, Windfall, 2002, chromogenic print, Gift of the Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, 2012.116.4
A block holding a toothbrush set with gold teeth raised in low relief on a lead sheet. The rectangular block holding the brush is almost halfway down the panel. The brush has a straight, toothbrush-like handle highlighted with shiny silver tin leaf. Four gold teeth are set in a row at what would be the brush end, to our left. Letters are stamped in the front face of the block to read, “THE CRITIC SMILES.” The artist signed and dated the work below the block with dotted lines, “J Johns ’69.” Also incised in the lower left corner of the lead sheet is “GEMINI III” with a Gemini horoscope symbol.
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Jasper Johns, Kenneth Tyler, Gemini G.E.L., The Critic Smiles, 1969, multiple of lead relief with gold and tin leaf, Gift of Gemini G.E.L. and the Artist, 1985.4.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Julie Mehretu, Cole Rogers, Entropia (review), 2004, color screenprint and lithograph on Arches 88 paper, Thomas G. Klarner Collection, Gift of Neal Turtell, 2018.24.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Robert Rauschenberg, Black Painting, 1952, oil and newspaper on canvas, Gift of Jasper Johns to the National Gallery of Art for the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, 2013.140.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Mickalene Thomas, Melody: Back, 2011, diffusion transfer print (Polaroid), Charina Endowment Fund and Peter Edwards and Rose Gutfeld Fund, 2020.3.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Rosa Bonheur, Cattle in the Auvergne, 1867, black and white chalk with stumping and touches of pastel on brown wove paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 2017.40.1
We look down onto a tidy stack of hundreds of sheets of white paper, which sits on a gray, speckled floor in this photograph. The top sheet is printed with a small, dove-gray rectangle at the center. A corner of the stack angles toward us, with the short side of the sheets to our left and the long side to our right.
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (Ross in L.A.), 1991, print on paper, endless copies, Gift of the Collectors Committee and Emily and Mitchell Rales, 2017.51.1
This vertical canvas is filled with geometric shapes that create patterns in red, blue, yellow, green, black, and white in this abstract painting. The paint is applied with visible brushstrokes, giving some areas a mottled look. Some of the patterns seem to revolve around a red circle near the top center. The circle has a black cross like a plus sign on a white field at its center, and a white band around its perimeter is outlined in black. A blue and white checkered band curves up over the red circle to our left while a banner-like form of alternating, wavy yellow and black lines cascade down to the right of the circle. Horizontal bands of red, white, and black extend across the canvas behind the circle. Below the circle, a blue panel with a curly, cursive red “E” is flanked to the left with a red and white checkerboard, then alternating, almost vertical lines of blue and white. The red number “4” appears on a yellow field at the bottom center of the work, and is flanked by rectangular forms and alternating bands of color to either side.
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Marsden Hartley, Berlin Abstraction, 1914/1915, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.21
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Jean Cocteau, Profile Head of a Woman, 1960, black wash and dry brush on yellowish wove paper (Santo-Sospir letterhead), Joseph F. McCrindle Collection, 2009.70.96
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Mark Bradford, Legendary, 2016, mixed media on canvas, Purchased as the Gift of Ken Griffin and Anonymous, 2017.1.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Marie Laurencin, In the Park, 1924, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.158
In shades of silvery gray and white, a cartoonish fist holds the handle of a beer stein so we look down into the glass. Filling the space around it, people sit, kiss, drink, or talk in a swirling, dream-like haze in this horizontal print.
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Nicole Eisenman, Harlan & Weaver, Harlan & Weaver, Beer Garden, 2012 - 2017, etching, aquatint, and drypoint, printed chine collé on wove Hahnemühle paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 2022.9.1
From a low vantage point, we look up along rolling, verdant farm fields bathed in sunlight that fill most of this nearly square canvas. Rows of stylized, gold-green hay almost fill landscape painting. The horizon line is high, almost at the top of the painting, and the hill in front of us slopes from the horizon down to a point far below us, at the bottom edge of the canvas. Along the hill, roughly parallel rows of harvested hay are bundled into distinctive tube-like mounds, with paths between them. The field is interrupted only by a small, solitary young tree near the lower left corner. Two muted, terracotta-red barns or outbuildings with pitched, tan-colored roofs perch at the top of the hill. They stand outlined against a light, clear blue sky at the top center of the composition. The canopies of several rounded trees puff up beyond the buildings, on the far side of the hill. A fan-like weathervane with flat, blade-like paddles sits atop the smaller barn. The other, larger building has a higher pitched roof with a small, lantern-shaped cupola on top and a wide door on the right side where the roof slopes down in a lean-to type of structure. A piece of farm machinery is parked in the field at the top right. At the bottom center of the canvas, a brown ceramic jug with a handle and red stopper rests on the ground in between the rows of bundled hay. The artist signed and dated the work with red paint in the bottom left corner: “GRANT WOOD 1939.” There is also a red painted copyright symbol to the left of the name.
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Grant Wood, Haying, 1939, oil on canvas on paperboard mounted on hardboard, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Strasburger, 1982.7.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Zanele Muholi, Zimaseka 'Zim' Salusalu, Gugulethu, Cape Town, 2011, gelatin silver print, Gift of Joshua and Sara Slocum, 2021.111.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

David Hockney, David Hockney, Inc., Self Portrait II, 2012, inkjet print on Canson BFK Rives paper, Gift of Mary and John Pappajohn, 2020.24.2
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

George Platt Lynes, Bernard Perlin, 1949, gelatin silver print, Gift of the Estate of Bernard Perlin, 2015.8.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

John Edmonds, Untitled (Hood 1), 2016, inkjet print, Gift of Larissa Leclair, 2019.163.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Berenice Abbott, Jean Cocteau, 1926, printed c. 1926 - 1936, gelatin silver print, Diana and Mallory Walker Fund, 2014.13.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Mariette Pathy Allen, Felicity, Then and Now, 1980s, printed 1989, dye imbibition print, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Donald C. and P. Dee Kirkpatrick), 2015.19.4566.4
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Fire Island, 1942, gelatin silver print, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2020.8.3
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Jess, Ex. 5 - Mind's I: Translation #12, 1965, oil on canvas on wood, The Nancy Lee and Perry Bass Fund, 1997.79.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Zoe Leonard, I want a president, 1992/2018, ink on onion skin paper, glass, L pins, Purchased as the Gift of the Gallery Girls in honor of Judith Brodie, 2019.28.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Sunil Gupta, Untitled #9, 1988, printed 2020, inkjet print, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2022.23.3
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Nancy Andrews, The Congressmen: Barney Frank and Gerry Studds, 1993, gelatin silver print, Gift of Nancy Andrews and Annie O'Neill, 2022.122.36
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Gwen John, The Convalescent, c. 1915-1925, oil on canvas, Paul Mellon Collection, 1994.59.15
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Gilbert & George, Untitled, c. 1973, gelatin silver print, Gift of Eileen and Michael Cohen, 2011.93.26
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-Portrait (With Dancer), 1974, diffusion transfer print (Polaroid), Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2008.30.26
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

ringl + pit, Grete Stern, Ellen Auerbach, Die Ringlpitis, 1931, bound volume of 6 photographs, 12 collages, 8 watercolors, 6 texts, and 1 drawing, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2017.141.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Anthony Friedkin, Jean Harlow, Drag Queen Ball, Long Beach, 1971, gelatin silver print, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon, 2018.177.71
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

Jeffrey Gibson, The Anthropophagic Effect, Garment No. 4, 2019, canvas, satin, cotton, brass grommets, nylon thread, artificial sinew, split reed, glass and plastic beads, nylon ribbon, Lehrman Fund and Millennium Fund, 2023.7.1
LGBTQ+ Art and Artists

American 20th Century, Associated Press, Title from caption on object: “Homosexuals Parade down Hollywood Boulevard”, June 29, 1970, gelatin silver print with applied color, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon, 2018.177.568



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Marsden Hartley

Robert Indiana

Jasper Johns

Ellsworth Kelly

Julie Mehretu

Zanele Muholi

Robert Rauschenberg

Andy Warhol

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Artle Hint

This artist’s screen print of the musician Prince for Vanity Fair was the basis for a recent Supreme Court ruling on fair use.

Artle Hint

This artist is influenced by fashion photography and Diane Arbus.

Artle Hint

This poet’s landmark publication led to an obscenity trial where he was eventually exonerated.

Artle Hint

This artist was born in Africa and immigrated to the U.S. to escape political turmoil.

Artle Hint

This artist’s work was inspired by classical mythology, poetry, and ancient Mediterranean cultures.

Artle Hint

This artist’s seminal work capturing the New York City's iconic architecture and rapidly transforming urban landscape of the 1930s was funded by the WPA's Federal Art Project.

Educator Resources (K-12)

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Lessons & Activities

Expressing the Individual

How is identity shaped, formed, and expressed? 

 

 

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Top image: Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, Clasped Hands of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, model 1853, bronze, Gift in honor of Margaret and Raymond Horowitz, 2005.41.1