The High Museum of Art has announced its new LGBTQIA+ Photography Centennial Acquisition Initiative.
When Maria L. Kelly, the Assistant Curator of Photography at the High, considered the museum’s collection of over 9,000 photographs, she realized that in the museum’s nearly 60 years of building a photography collection, LGBTQ+ artists had been underrepresented.
“While I was going through all of our works and looking at themes and thinking about what exhibitions could happen and where we should be going with acquisitions, I realized that we had inadvertently, over the decades of collecting photography, missed out on representing queer voices in the photo collection,” Kelly told Georgia Voice.
Nearly a year-and-a-half later, the High has publicly announced the four LGBTQ+ photographers whose works have been acquired through the initiative: Peter Hujar, known for his portraits capturing ‘70s and ‘80s New York; Catherine Opie, who first came to prominence in the ‘90s for her series of studio portraits depicting gay, lesbian, and trans people in her social circles; Naima Greene, an up-and-coming photographer capturing her own queer community of color; and Martine Gutierrez, a contemporary photographer celebrated her for self-portraits that question gender roles, mainstream beauty standards, and identity.
Naima Green (American, born 1990), It Lingers Sweet, 2022, pigmented inkjet print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Peter Hujar (American, 1934–1987), Larry Ree Backstage (III), ca. 1973, gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Catherine Opie (American, born 1961), Pig Pen, 1993, dye coupler print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Martine Gutierrez (American, born 1989), Queer Rage, Imagine Life-Size and I’m Tyra, p68–69 from Indigenous Woman, 2018, chromogenic print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Kelly hopes the initiative broadens the history of photography that the High is capturing in its collection and encourages connection and learning among visitors.
“I always think it’s really important for people to be able to see themselves in a work, to come in and be like, ‘Oh, I recognize the subject matter, or I recognize the story that’s being told here,’” she said. “…But then I also want it to be the case for the people who maybe don’t identify in any kind of way to [say], ‘Here’s a story I didn’t know about, here’s a worldview I didn’t know about, here’s a history I had no idea about.’”
While Kelly says there are no plans for all these works to be exhibited together, Green’s “It Lingers Sweet” is currently on display in “Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing,” and there will be a new acquisitions exhibit next summer which will feature some of the initiative’s other acquisitions.
Moving forward, Kelly says she has a “long wish list” of other LGBTQ+ photographers to include in the collection and is working to raise funds to continue expanding the scope of the identities and experiences represented at the High.
To learn more and explore the High Museum’s photography collection, visit high.org/collection-area/photography.
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