A field of bloom and hum

Tang Museum

Saratoga Springs | New York | USA

14 Feb, 2025 - 20 Jul, 2025

At a time when the rights of members of the queer community are under threat (the American Civil Liberties Union tracked 533 anti-LGBTQ bills in the US in 2024, for example), the Tang will present a two-floor exhibition featuring work by queer artists spanning the last century that assert their lives and stories upon the world. a field of bloom and hum brings together extensive series created over multiple decades by artists such as Steven Arnold, Dyke Action Machine!, and Robert Giard, with seminal works by David Armstrong, Joe Brainard, Tony Feher, Oliver Herring, Jim Hodges, George Platt Lynes, Catherine Opie, Mickalene Thomas, and many others. They will be presented alongside new commissions鈥攊ncluding works made in collaboration with students鈥攁nd an art and activism resource room for gatherings, workshops, dissemination, and study.

The Wachenheim Gallery groups works into intergenerational dialogues. One room, for example, brings together a newly commissioned wall painting by Edie Fake called A Prayer for a Place, which imagines a place for trans people in society, with Oliver Herring鈥檚 Queensize Bed with Coat, 1993-1994, a knit sculpture created as an homage to drag performance artist and playwright Ethyl Eichelberger, and photographs from Nan Goldin鈥檚 Ballad of Sexual Dependency, 1979-1986, an influential and intimate photographic diary of the life of the artist and her friends, which extends into other rooms.