Beyond Mapplethorpe’s Ghost: “The First Homosexuals” and the Courage Museums Desperately Need Now

So, let’s spill some tea. Here’s a roll of paper towels. Don’t stain the carpet, please. There’s an exhibition in Chicago, “The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869-1939,” and darling, it is the moment. We’re talking record-breaking advance ticket sales at the Wrightwood 659 museum, audiences moved to tears, a collective sigh of “finally!” as a “robbed history is being restored.” The public, it seems, is not just ready but starving for a real, unflinching look at early queer culture and how the very term “homosexual” came to be. Queer is here, honey, and the people are showing up in droves.

But then, there’s the flip side of this glittering coin. While Chicago is having a full-blown cultural renaissance, lead curator Jonathan D. Katz, a respected professor of queer art history from UPenn, reveals a rather tired and frankly dusty tale: over 100 museums worldwide, including big names like the Tate Britain, have given this critically important exhibition the cold shoulder. Even when offered for free. The excuses? The usual, beige-toned “it doesn’t fit our programming” or “we’re fully scheduled, darling, for the next millennium, apparently.” It begs the question: what are they really so afraid of?

“The First Homosexuals”: Serving History, Unfiltered

This isn’t just a collection of pretty pictures; it’s a deep, scholarly dive with over 300 works by 125 artists—some famous, some criminally overlooked. We’re talking Cocteau, the Lumière Brothers, but also the likes of Jacques-Émile Blanche and Alice Austen. The exhibition meticulously traces how “homosexual” was coined in 1868 (thank you, Karl-Maria Kertbeny, for trying to tell us sexuality was a spectrum even then, while Karl Ulrichs was busy trying to put us in a “third sex” box). It showcases everything from men in dresses on the streets of 1820s Peru to Japanese scrolls from 1850 frankly depicting bisexual experiences, and a 1891 photo of four women in a decidedly romantic clinch. This is our history, meticulously researched and powerfully presented, aiming to “decenter the assumptions we have about sexuality.” The Chicago audiences get it. They’re connecting. They’re feeling it.

Institutional Cold Feet: What’s the Real Sitch, Museums?

So why are so many other institutions clutching their pearls? Katz points to a few potential culprits. There’s the “Mapplethorpe Hangover,” that decades-old scare from 1988 when the Corcoran Gallery got the vapors over some homoerotic photos. Then there’s the current political climate, with the Punk administration and its allies taking a rather medieval view on arts funding, especially if it dares to acknowledge anything beyond a rigid gender binary or, heaven forbid, “gender ideology.” One museum director even whispered to Katz, “It’s exactly the kind of exhibition I want to show, and therefore it’s the exhibition I can’t show.” Translation: someone, likely on a board somewhere, is scared.

But let’s be brutally honest: blaming Mapplethorpe in 2025? Please. Robert Mapplethorpe has been an art history icon, resting in peace, for longer than some of these curators have been alive. The world has, for the most part, moved on. Queer art, queer history, queer people are not some shocking new phenomenon to be handled with kid gloves and a side of smelling salts. We are, as they say, everywhere. To pretend otherwise, or to use outdated controversies as a shield for what Katz rightly calls “age-old prejudicial politics,” isn’t just timid; it’s a dereliction of cultural duty. It tells us you’re hiding something, afraid of something within your own hallowed halls or, perhaps, within yourselves.

Art’s Job Description: Comfort the Afflicted, Afflict the Comfortable (and Make Us Think!)

It’s truly past time we, as a society, fully embraced art that makes us stop and consider—consider who we are, who we were, and who we could be. Art isn’t always meant to be a decorative accessory that matches the drapes. Its most vital function is to challenge, to provoke, to make us see the world, and ourselves, anew. When museums shy away from this, when they opt for an endless parade of “safe” Monet prints and a strict diet of the comfortably familiar, they’re not just being boring; they’re failing. They’re telling a large swath of the population that their stories, their histories, don’t matter enough to be seen.

Katz himself argues that museums have a “remarkable opportunity to build their audience and relevance if they seize it” by “frankly engaging” with the real, pressing social and political issues that define our times. He’s not wrong. There’s a vast, diverse audience out there eager for content that speaks to their lives and their histories, an audience that might just become “veteran museum-goers” if institutions had the nerve to meet them where they are.

Get With It or Get a Therapist, Darlings

So, what’s the deal, museums? The audience is clearly ready. The history is here. The art is powerful. “The First Homosexuals” demonstrates a public eager to learn and connect. The continued institutional rejections, the vague excuses, the behind-the-scenes anxieties—it all points to a fear that is, frankly, unbecoming of institutions supposedly dedicated to culture, history, and enlightenment.

Perhaps it’s time for these gatekeepers to take a deep breath, look at the calendar (it’s 2025, not 1955), and recognize that hiding or avoiding queer history isn’t just bad curating; it’s bad faith. If you can’t embrace the full, complex, diverse spectrum of human experience and artistic expression, including powerful exhibitions like “The First Homosexuals,” then perhaps, as the saying goes, “darling, go see a therapist.” Because the world has moved on, and it’s waiting for you to catch up.