SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY.- The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College announced the Queer Archives Symposium, a two-day program of conversations, presentations, and screenings on April 4–5, culminating with a special dance and music performance.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition a field of bloom and hum—a survey of work from more than 160 queer artists from the past 100 years—the symposium brings together a vibrant group of artists, scholars, archivists, dancers, and musicians to explore the complexities and power of queer art to assert a place for queer identities and communities.

In one session, art history students will create new oral histories in a public interview with exhibiting artists Siobhan Liddell and Liz Collins. Other sessions feature scholars and artists discussing the legacy of Steven Arnold, David Armstrong, and Sheyla Baykal, and the continuing work of artists Nayland Blake, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Matthew Leifheit. Another session is dedicated to screenings of experimental film and video made in the wake of the AIDS crisis, followed by a discussion with film scholars and the filmmaker Tom Kalin. The culminating event will be a performance of music and dance, featuring Hub New Music and the five-part What If We’re Beautiful, composed by Daniel Thomas Davis. For the first time, the dancers Brian Lawson and Aaron Loux will perform their choreography with live music by Hub New Music. A public reception follows the performance.

The largest exhibition ever organized by the Tang, a field of bloom and hum spans both floors of the museum. On the first floor, four rooms present artists in intergenerational dialogues. One, for example, features work by Oliver Herring, Don Herron, and Nan Goldin, along with a new commission of a mural by Edie Fake. Another first-floor gallery sets work by Dyke Action Machine! and Donald Moffett besides the Queer Ecology Hanky Project, including work recently made in collaboration with students.

The second-floor gallery features two purpose-built stages; a salon-style wall of work by more than 140 artists that spans the early twentieth century to today; monumental works by Camila Falquez, Joel Otterson, and Joan Snyder; and seating and a rug by Liz Collins paired with Nayland Blake’s Ruins of a Sensibility, turntables and the artist’s album collection. Taken together, the gallery forms a listening room, performance space, lecture hall, and classroom beneath a tapestry of identity, memory, and community.

The exhibition is organized by Dayton Director Ian Berry, in collaboration with artists and Skidmore College faculty. It is supported by the Friends of the Tang, The Alfred Z. Solomon Residency Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The performance by Hub New Music is the second annual performance in the Adirondack Trust New Works Series at the Tang Museum.

All events are free and open to the public.