Exhibition of over 150 queer photography works from the Aronowitz family collection, spanning from the early 20th century to the present.
Queer Constellations: Photographs from the Aronowitz Family Collection opens at the Columbus Museum of Art on Friday, October 16, and stays on view through March 21, 2027. It's a large show—more than 150 works by more than 75 artists—and it comes from a local source: the Columbus-based Aronowitz family, who gave the museum 50 photographs to start, with another 100 pulled from their broader collection to round it out.
The range of names is wide. You'll find Lola Flash, Catherine Opie, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Shikeith, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Peter Hujar, George Platt Lynes, and Robert Mapplethorpe. The work spans from the early 20th century to the present, and the mediums are just as mixed: Polaroids, drugstore prints, color photographs, and platinum-palladium prints hang side by side. It's a look at a long tradition of queer artists using photography to represent their identities and push the medium toward fine art.
Curator Vince Aletti arranged the show in a non-chronological, salon-style hang, which he says is meant to evoke the personal archives and domestic displays through which queer histories have been collected and shared. The title comes from Andrea Geyer's Constellations series, in which she rephotographs and collages archival images of queer women. The exhibition continues the museum's history of presenting LGBTQ+ art, following Art After Stonewall, 1969-1989, and it's part of the 2026 FotoFocus Biennial: The Long View.
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Queer Constellations is in the Lower Level Walter Wing of the museum, at 480 E. Broad St., and it's included with general admission, free for members. It runs from October 16 through March 21, 2027.
