The Columbus Museum of Art opened “Queer Constellations: Photographs from the Aronowitz Family Collection” on Oct. 16. It’s up through March 21, 2027.
The show started with a gift. The Aronowitz family of Columbus gave the museum more than 50 photographs, the museum said in its announcement. The curators hung them with about 100 more from the family’s collection.
“This was an exhibition that the museum hoped to do because the Aronowitz family had expressed interest in making a major gift to the museum, and it’s a wonderful gift,” co-curator Kaitlin Booher told Ohio State’s student paper, The Lantern.
The pictures run from the early 1900s to now. Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe and George Platt Lynes share the rooms with Catherine Opie, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Shikeith and Wolfgang Tillmans, according to the museum’s exhibition page. Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz, Lola Flash and Duane Michals are in it too.
“What I hope visitors come away with is an appreciation of the ways that queer artists and allies have contributed to the history of photography,” Booher told The Buckeye Flame, Ohio’s LGBTQ+ newsroom.
Vince Aletti’s Salon-Style Hang Skips the Timeline
Booher, the museum’s associate curator of photography, organized the show with critic and curator Vince Aletti. Curatorial fellow Rae Root worked with them.
Aletti ignored chronology. Photos from different decades crowd the walls together, salon style.
“People in their houses tend to do this a lot, like, the gallery wall in your house,” Booher told The Lantern.
The title comes from Andrea Geyer’s “Constellations” series, which rephotographs and collages archival images of queer women. The museum’s exhibition page borrows a line Aletti once wrote: “Queer is in the eye of the beholder.”
Booher sees a long tradition behind queer photography’s place in LGBTQ+ history. “There’s an artistic lineage and an artistic tradition that does have to do with people who happen to be gay or lesbian, working with photography, and using the medium to represent their identities,” she told The Lantern.
George Hoyningen-Huene’s 1931 ‘Horst, Torso, Paris’
One picture Booher singled out is George Hoyningen-Huene’s “Horst, Torso, Paris.” It shows his lover, fellow fashion photographer Horst P. Horst, holding a javelin.
“It’s both a really personal photograph of one boyfriend photographing the other, but also about the appreciation of classical antiquity and the Olympics,” she told The Buckeye Flame.
It’s a platinum-palladium print, one of several formats in a show that also has Polaroids and drugstore prints. “It’s an expensive way to make a print, so it means that Huene really liked the image and wanted it to be large-scale,” Booher said.
The gift adds 37 artists the museum had never collected before. “The Aronowitz Family’s extraordinary gift significantly strengthens the museum’s ability to preserve and share these artistic legacies with future generations,” executive director Brooke A. Minto said in the announcement.
“These photographs were collected by a Columbus family, so this is a Columbus story,” marketing director Lydia Simon told The Lantern.
Booher said early visitors, queer visitors most of all, have found the show affirming. “And bringing together work that celebrates queer identity is especially important right now,” she said.
Columbus Museum of Art Tickets, Free Admission and Programs
The show is in the Lower Level Walter Wing at 480 E. Broad St. It’s included with general admission, $22 for adults, per the museum’s visit page. Visitors 25 and under get in free. Sundays are free through the end of 2026, the museum says. The museum warns of nudity and sexual content, and anyone under 18 needs an adult along.
Booher leads a free curator tour Dec. 3 at 6 p.m. The Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus sings Dec. 5 at 2 p.m. On Feb. 4, Geyer, Sepuya, Mark Armijo McKnight and A.L. Steiner will talk about the work.
“I very much hope that college students in particular come to see this show,” Booher told The Lantern. “It’s such an image-savvy generation.”
