Curating Queer Histories

M+ x HKU Art History Lecture Series

Curating Queer Histories

Date: 4 March 2026 (Tuesday)
Time: 6:30pm-7:45pm
Venue: Grand Hall, Centennial Campus, HKU (directions)

Registration: CLICK HERE
Free seating, with doors open at 6:20pm

Abstract: Julia Bryan-Wilson will provide a curatorial overview of the 2024-25 show Queer Histories at the Museum of Art of São Paulo, placing the show within the context of larger debates about queer/trans representation, space, religion, abstraction, and archives. In doing so, she raises questions about how to stage political arguments in space. She also argues that art history itself has been a crucial resource for queer/trans artists as they look to alternative modes of cultural inscription.

Speaker: Julia Bryan-Wilson teaches contemporary art and gender studies at Columbia University. She is the award-winning author of several books, including Fray: Art and Textile Politics (2017, winner of the ASAP Book Prize, the Frank Jewett Mather Award, and the Robert Motherwell Book Award) and Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (2023).  Her first book Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era was translated into Korean and Japanese, and her co-authored book Art in the Making has been translated into Korean. As Curator-at-Large at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, she co-curated several exhibitions, including Queer Histories (with Adriano Pedrosa and André Mesquita, 2024-25). In November 2025 she opened two shows—GUTSY: On Feminist Infrastructures (at MSN Warsaw) and Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces (at the Wallach Art Gallery, organized with Natalia Brizuela). Her writing has appeared in many venues, including Art Bulletin, Artforum, Art Journal, Oxford Art Journal, and Journal of Modern Craft, and she has authored texts on artists such as Pacita Abad, Lee Bul, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Yoko Ono, and Yinka Shonibare.  In 2024 she served as President of the International Jury of the 60th Venice Biennale.