Molly Landreth, Ronni and Jo, Seattle, WA, 2005

Barnett Newman, Onement I, 1948

Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950

Hans Namuth photographs of Jackson Pollock, 1950

Hans Namuth, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, 1953

Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner

John Cage and Merce Cunningham Cage, Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg

Andy Warhol

Gran Fury, Read My Lips (Boys), 1988 Gran Fury, The Government has Blood on Its Hands, 1988

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1957-1996

Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, November 16 – January 6, 1990, Protest outside Artists Space

The influence of the New Morality and the effective use of AIDS as the most powerful tool for sexual repression makes it even more imperative to continue to create and exhibit art that portrays sexuality as a positive force. nan goldin

Robert Mapplethorpe, The Perfect Moment, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, December 9 – January 29, 1989

Robert Mapplethorpe, Joe, 1978 Ken Moody and Robert Sherman, 1984

Cover of ARTFORUM, September 1989 Robert Mapplethorpe, Rosie, 1976

The NEA Four (and Martha Wilson): Holly Hughes, Tim Miller, John Fleck, Karen Finley, 2004

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian, Washington, DC, October 30 – February 13, 2011

David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly (film in progress), 1986-87 (still)

Protests against the Smithsonian’s removal of Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly from Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

Queer and other insurgents have long striven, often dangerously or scandalously, to cultivate what good folks used to call criminal intimacies. We have developed relations and narratives that are only recognized as intimate in queer culture: girlfriends, gal pals, fuckbuddies, tricks. Queer culture has learned not only how to sexualize these and other relations, but also to use them as a context for witnessing intense and personal affect while elaborating a public world of belonging and transformation. Making a queer world has required the development of kinds of intimacy that bear no necessary relation to domestic space, to kinship, to the couple form, to property, or to the nation. lauren berlant & michael warner

Jamie Q, What Makes an Object Queer?, 2011

If we presume that sexuality is crucial to bodily orientation, to how we inhabit spaces, then the differences between how we are orientated sexually are not only a matter of “which” objects we are orientated toward, but also how we extend through our bodies in the world. Sexuality would not be seen as determined only by object choice, but as involving differences in one’s very relation to the world—that is, in how one “faces” the world or is directed toward it. Or rather, we could say that orientations toward sexual objects affect other things that we do, such that different orientations, different ways of directing one’s desires, means inhabiting different worlds. sara ahmed

It is not simply the object that determines the “direction” of one’s desire; rather the direction one takes makes some others available as objects to be desired. Being directed toward the same sex or the other sex becomes seen as moving along different lines. sara ahmed

THE BRADY BUNCH!

From Awkward Family Photos website (with apologies if these are your family photos)

From Awkward Family Photos website (again, sincere apologies, if these are your photos)

Still from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975 Frank, Brad, and Janet

United Colors of Benetton, 1992 Photograph of David Kirby and family by Therese Frare, 1990

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Bed), 1991

Molly Landreth, Ronni and Jo, Seattle, WA, 2005

Covering the walls, are photographs. The wedding photograph Covering the walls, are photographs. The wedding photograph. Underneath are the family pictures, some formal and others more casual … Everywhere I turn, even in the failure of memory, reminds me of how the family home puts objects on display that measure sociality in terms of the heterosexual gift. sara ahmed

Jim Verburg, Family Album Number One, 2009

Jim Verburg, For a Relationship, 2007

No one seems to have a sexuality … except for me. jim verburg

Glenn Ligon, A Feast of Scraps, 1994-98

We are taught that, if we feel we really must have a record of the shameful same-sex portions of our lives, then we should do so by having two albums, dual collections, one for blood relations and one for our same gender loving brothers and sisters. And they should not be allowed to intersect. Our orientation is meant to be isolated, separate from and alien to the lives we live with our ‘real’ families. Far too often, however, within this constellation of the ‘real,’ black gays and lesbians wonder if we will even be in the viewfinder when the family portrait is taken. glenn ligon