SA/VS to Co-host First Scholarly Symposium Dedicated to the Importance of Archival Research to Queer Scholarship in American Art History

The University of Kentucky School of Art and Visual Studies and the University of Louisville Hite Institute of Art and Design will co-host the Queer Art | Queer Archives Symposium, Sept. 20-21, at the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville. The two-day symposium is free and open to the public.

The symposium brings together experts specializing in queer art, theory and archival methods for two days of presentations, discussions and exhibitions.

“As the first scholarly symposium dedicated to the importance of archival research to queer scholarship in American art history, Queer Art | Queer Archives aims to generate new knowledge by focusing on LGBTQ+ artists and activists who have been marginalized in the art historical canon,” says Miriam Kienle, associate professor of Art History in the UK School of Art and Visual Studies. “By focusing on archives, the symposium will generate new interpretive frameworks to analyze performances, zines, correspondence and other ephemeral objects often overlooked by museums, galleries and textbooks.”

Historically, queer practices circumvented institutions and experimented with media not sanctioned by museums. Artists and art historians concerned with queer practices, therefore, often devise new strategies to scour archives for the ephemeral objects and documents that constitute much of this overlooked work. By convening scholars who conduct queer archival research, this symposium puts a spotlight on practices that have been systematically marginalized by narratives of American art history.

Symposium speakers include scholars from Columbia University, University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, the Smithsonian Institution, Stanford University, Rice University and others.

Exhibiting artists include Letitia Quesenberry, Stephen Irwin, Robert Morgan, John Brooks, Borealis, Cierra Evans, Kat Smith and Josh Porter. 

In conjunction with the symposium, the University of Kentucky will host several exhibitions around campus. 

Bolivar Art Gallery | Aug. 30 – Sept. 28

• “SAFE PASSAGE: The work of Robert Morgan”
• “Living Archives: A Contemporary Portrait of Queer Kentucky” by John Brooks, Ceirra Evans, Kat Smith and Borealis
• “Black, Femme, Queer, and Here: Selections from the Faulkner Morgan Archive”

Gatton Student Center | Aug. 15 – Oct. 23

• “Queer Gear: Clothing from LGBTQ+ Kentuckians” 

UK Art Museum | Aug. 20, 2025 – Jan. 18, 2025

• “Queer Views”

Queer Art | Queer Archives Symposium organizers are Miriam Kienle, associate professor of art history, visual studies and curatorial studies at the University of Kentucky; and Jennifer Sichel, assistant professor of contemporary art and theory at the University of Louisville.

Kienle specializes in modern, contemporary and American art. A prolific author and curator, her research has been supported by many external grants. Kienle’s book, “Queer Networks: Ray Johnson’s Correspondence Art” (Minnesota, 2023), analyzes Johnson’s role as an initiator of the international correspondence art movement through the lenses of network studies, queer theory and histories of interpersonal communication. Sichel’s research focuses on 20th-century art, criticism and visual culture of the United States, with an emphasis on queer forms of attachment and belonging. Her book, “Criticism without Authority: Gene Swenson and Jill Johnston’s Queer Practices,” is forthcoming with University of Chicago Press.

Day 1: Sept. 20, University of Kentucky, Bolivar Gallery, 336 Bolivar Street. 

Panel discussion with Josh T Franco, “Hanging Out”: On Working Side by Side; Lex Lancaster, Archives in Ruins: Queer-Trans Methods for Working with What Remains; and Jeannine Tang, Negative Space: Contemporary Art, Trans Life and Non-Performance.

Panel discussion with Andy Campbell, At Hand Histories: Poverty, Queerness, Archives and David J. Getsy, Street Addresses: Performing the Queer Life of the Street in early 1970s New York. 
 
Gallery Reception at the Bolivar Art Gallery 
 
Day 2: Sept. 21, University of Louisville, Bingham Humanities Hassold Theatre, 2216 S. 1st St. 
 
Panel discussion with Marika Cifor, Viral Transmission: AIDS Archives in Digital Cultures, and Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez, On Sheyla Baykal (1944-1997). 

Panel discussion with C. Ondine Chavoya, Disco Clones and Teddy Sandoval’s Butch Gardens School of Art; Olivia K. Young, Black Queer Crip Embodiments in Indira Allegra’s Documenting Disability, and Julia Bryan-Wilson, Conceição’s Queer Bugrinhos.

Gallery Reception at the Cressman Center for Visual Art, 100 E. Main St, Louisville, KY. 

The symposium and exhibitions are generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, LexArts, University of Louisville's Hite Institute of Art and Design, University of Kentucky School of Art & Visual Studies, and the Office of the Vice President for Research.