As celebrants across the nation honor the 50th anniversary year of the Stonewall Uprisings, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU announces that Miami will be one of only three cities in the U.S. to host “Art after Stonewall, 1969-1989.” The major exhibition opens in Miami on Sept. 14 and continues through Jan. 5, 2020.
Due to its monumental size and scope — more than 200 artworks — the show will encompass the entire second floor of the museum, including the Frost Art Museum’s Grand Galleries.
The opening reception is on Saturday, Sept. 14, (lecture at 4 p.m. by the show’s curator, Jonathan Weinberg, followed by the reception from 5 to 7 p.m.). The museum is located on the campus of Florida International University.
Art after Stonewall will headline Miami’s Art Basel in December, when the global spotlight shines on this city for one of the world’s leading art fairs, attracting 70,000-plus collectors, cultural leaders, artists and media influencers from around the world.
This is the first national museum show of its kind to survey the impact of the LGBTQ civil rights movement on visual culture, during the pivotal two decades after the Stonewall Riots, as the first Pride marches took flight ― a bold visual history of 20 years in American queer life.
“When the police raided the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, that night’s events changed the course of American history. Art after Stonewall brings to light the evolution of the modern LGBT movement and its undeniable impact on the art world,” said Dr. Jordana Pomeroy, director of the Frost Art Museum FIU.
“The exhibition acknowledges the guts and grit of these artists, gay and straight, to make declarative and public visual statements about gender and sexuality in a predominantly homophobic world. The Frost Art Museum FIU is honored and delighted to bring to Miami the tour de force ‘Art after Stonewall,’ which encompasses the passion, energy, and excitement that inspired the art world at this time,” Dr. Pomeroy added.
The Miami presentation of “Art after Stonewall, 1969-1989” will be the first time the entire exhibition will be presented under one roof, because the previous showing in New York was split up between two venues.
More than 200 works ─ photographs, paintings, sculpture, film clips, video, music, performance pieces, plus historical documents and images taken from magazines, newspapers and television — will be on view at the Frost. The exhibition presents the work of openly LGBTQ artists alongside other artists who also engaged with the emerging queer subcultures, between 1969 and 1989.
The Stonewall Riots are considered a historic flash-point for the LGBTQ movement, and the first two decades of art-making that immediately followed the uprising have never been explored this way before. This exhibition was first presented in New York, at two venues: the Leslie-Lohman Museum and NYU’s Grey Art Gallery (recently on view from April through July).
The list of trailblazing artists includes: Vito Acconci, Laura Aguilar, Diane Arbus, Lyle Ashton Harris, Judith F. Baca, Don Bachardy, Lynda Benglis, JEB (Joan E. Biren), Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Lenore Chinn, Arch Connelly, Tee A. Corinne, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Karen Finley, Louise Fishman, Nan Goldin, Michela Griffo, Sunil Gupta, Barbara Hammer, Harmony Hammond, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Peter Hujar, Holly Hughes, Tseng Kwong Chi, Greer Lankton, Annie Leibovitz, Christopher Makos, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frank Moore, Alice Neel, Catherine Opie, Jack Pierson, Marlon T. Riggs, Jack Smith, Joan Snyder, Carmelita Tropicana, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, and Martin Wong, among others.
