AIDS
In response to the AIDS epidemic, a number of activist groups, including Gran Fury and the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, have used art as a means to raise awareness about the epidemic.
After Stonewall, American gay male art underwent a radical transformation as artists came out and began to treat gay themes openly and directly.
American television has made significant strides in its portrayal of homosexuals in dramatic series and movies, but cable networks have been more daring than the "big three" broadcast networks.
The poster boy of radical and militant queer cinema, Gregg Araki disdains the ghettoizing label of "gay filmmaker."
Award-winning lyricist and playwright Howard Ashman collaborated with Alan Menken on projects as diverse as the stage musical Little Shop of Horrors and the animated Disney film Beauty and the Beast.
Theatrical producer Richard Barr is most famous for producing the works of Edward Albee, introducing the European Absurdists to Broadway, and presenting the seminal gay drama, Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band.
Avant-garde American artist Ross Bleckner creates paintings that draw upon and play with earlier traditions of abstraction by wedding his private experience as a gay man to public concerns surrounding gay identity, most especially the AIDS crisis.
British performance artist and photographer Tessa Boffin was the first British lesbian artist to produce work in response to the AIDS epidemic.
Actor Dan Butler, best known for his portrayal of "Bulldog" Briscoe on the television comedy Frasier, not only came out as a gay man, but also authored and starred in the gay-themed play The Only Worse Thing You Could Have Told Me.
Luis Caballero Holguín, one of the most significant Latin American painters of the second half of the twentieth century, considered his homosexuality a fundamental component of his artistic expression.
Since the rise of the homosexual emancipation movement three decades ago, a handful of Canadian artists have confronted issues of gay and lesbian sexuality in their work.
A dynamic performer on stage, television, film, and record, Nell Carter built a successful and versatile show business career; only after her death was her longtime relationship with a woman revealed to the public.
French writer and filmmaker Cyril Collard became a key figure in the struggle to revise the representation of AIDS in literature and art.
Contemporary Art, which designates new currents in art since 1970, is identified with postmodernism; during this period an art addressing gay and lesbian identity emerged.
American composer of symphonies, chamber works, choral settings, operas, and film scores, John Corigliano has created some of the most moving music inspired by the AIDS epidemic.
Versatile actor Alan Cumming has performed a wide variety of roles on stage, screen, and television, earning numerous awards for his acting and also for his support of glbtq causes.
Although American gay film icon Brad Davis has been described as "the first heterosexual actor to die of AIDS," he was widely known as bisexual within the entertainment community.
The queer community has used documentary film to resurrect historical memory and to permit the marginalized to bear witness, as well as to build an image base that reflects our diversity and counters distorted representations.
Actor-director Robert Drivas brought a provocative sexuality and an emotional intensity to his stage and screen performances at a time when the male body was being liberated as the object of the audience's gaze.
American fashion designer Perry Ellis achieved spectacular success, based on his clean-cut, casual, yet often whimsical designs; but his career was cut short by his early death, rumored to have been the result of complications from AIDS.
Writer, director, and producer Rob Epstein is one of the most accomplished documentary filmmakers of his generation, having worked on a number of landmark gay-themed films.
One of the most important black photographers of the late twentieth century, Rotimi Fani-Kayode explores important themes of racial and sexual identity.
Playwright and composer William Finn, best known for his Tony Award-winning musical The Falsettos, speaks with understanding about confronting life in all its complexity with sadness and joy, dilemmas and hope intermingled.
From the 1960s until his death in the 1988, puppeteer Wayland Flowers presented to mainstream television audiences a campy gay point of view mediated through his puppet "Madame," who eventually eclipsed him in fame.
The first openly gay man and the first Mexican-American to win the United States figure skating championship, Rudy Galindo, himself HIV-positive, has worked hard to increase awareness of AIDS, especially in minority communities.
Film Actors: Gay Male
Film Actors: Lesbian
Liberace
Photography: Gay Male, Pre-Stonewall
Censorship in the Arts
Flynn, Errol