Panel discussion on The First Homosexuals

This panel discussion will reflect on the central ideas and broader implications of the exhibition The First Homosexuals. It will start with an introduction to the exhibition’s conceptual framework by Jonathan D. Katz, followed by a conversation that will explore what it means to center homosexuality—a term that emerged in the late nineteenth century from legal theory, psychiatry, and medicine—as an art-historical category. What is gained by understanding art as a record of queer life and experience? How can queer perspectives help us to understand certain works anew? The panel will situate the exhibition within current debates in queer art history and in relation to other recent exhibitions. Particular attention will be given to the Swiss context of this second iteration following Chicago, as well as the exhibition’s engagement with questions of colonialism.

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