The emergence of Queer art as a studied and celebrated aspect of American art (and life) has been a comparatively recent phenomenon. From the early 1950s to the present, the full recognition of such art would take the combined actions of legal challenges and a fundamental rethinking of science to decriminalize and depathologize Queer sexuality.

The artifacts of Queer life have been traditionally hidden and obscure. The art produced in the early twentieth-century Queer underground has to be hunted down, pulled out of diverse contexts, and made clear in the light of current acceptance, especially where, in recent earlier times, clarity could mean arrest and imprisonment. In terms of art, and art making, there is a lot of curatorial catching up ahead of us. This project is one effort to foster that catch-up.