The First Homosexuals

The exhibition The First Homosexuals at the Kunstmuseum Basel turns a spotlight on the early visibility of same-sex desire and gender diversity in the arts. Showcasing around one hundred paintings, photographs, works on paper, and sculptures, it illuminates how new visions of sexuality, gender, and identity took shape from 1869—the year the word “homosexual” first appeared in print. The multifaceted presentation frames perspectives on queer networks, intimate portraits, coded desires, colonial entanglements, and bold life choices.

The term “homosexual” first comes into use in the German-speaking world in 1869 and undergoes a substantial shift over the following decades. Debate over its meaning ranged from a universal capacity for same-sex love to the idea of a ‘third sex’. Over time, the term came to describe a minority embracing same-sex desire. During those decades, artists grapple with the issue in a wide variety of ways: they portray friends and lovers, capture the everyday lives of couples, or experiment with gender roles. Art offers them the latitude and the creative means to express realities and ideas for which there is as yet no appropriate language.

The exhibition The First Homosexuals explores the nascent creative engagement with these subjects in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Across thematic sections, it highlights artists and writers who openly explored—and at times embraced—homosexual and trans identities. It follows the evolution of the nude in dialogue with shifting ideas about sexuality and shows how friendship and familiar art-historical tropes served as discreet (and in some cases not so discreet) codes for same-sex desire. The exhibition also looks beyond Europe, examining how many European artists saw same-sex desire as a quality almost inherent in colonial territories, and, in response, artists across the world challenged and resisted this colonial domination.

The First Homosexuals retraces both the cultural and artistic output and the early history of the LGBTQIA+ community. A different version of the exhibition was organized by Alphawood Exhibitions at Wrightwood 659, Chicago, from May 2 until August 2, 2025, researched and curated by the US-American art historian Jonathan D. Katz in collaboration with Johnny Willis and other scholars around the world. The Basel adaptation combines international loans—many of which have never been on display in Switzerland—with the Kunstmuseum’s own ample holdings. Seen together, the works of art offer insights into the genesis of a concept that is now an integral part of people’s identities and contemporary life.

Accompanying the exhibition at Wrightwood 659, Monacelli Press has published an extensive catalogue, featuring 22 original and illuminating essays by leading experts in art and queer history, each focusing on one geographical region – from Japan to Australia to the Indigenous populations of South America.

The exhibition is made possible by the Alphawood Foundation Chicago, a private foundation working for an equitable, just, and humane society.