Anke Kempkes will address questions arising from the curatorial framing of queer art in the Modern era, drawing on her concept for the exhibition Queer Modernism 1900–1950 at K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf (27.09.2025–15.2.2026; Co-curated by Isabelle Malz, Curator at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, with Isabelle Tondre, Research Assistant at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen).
The project proposes an alternative history of the first half of the 20th century and beyond, foregrounding visual articulations of non-normative life and subjectivities and the central engagement of artists with desire, gender, sexuality, and the politics of self-representation. It further examines how queer artists of the period challenged and transcended canonical and disciplinary boundaries, while their practices were simultaneously situated in the contexts of colonialism and class stratification.
Queer curating of Modernism must contend with the “politics of oblivion” and the gaps of fragmented and invisibilized archives. The project seeks not merely to reposition marginalized practices within the history of Modernism, but to underscore the specific critiques these artists articulated vis-à-vis avant-garde orthodoxies, and the ways they developed independent stylistic trajectories and alternative sites of representation. It further situates these perspectives within the framework of contemporary queer and trans* discourses.
The lecture and subsequent panel discussion with queer Modernism experts Thomas Kennedy and Gemma Roll Bentley will reflect on insights gained through processes of research and curating from a queer lens.
Speakers:
Anke Kempkes is a curator, art historian, and author whose work critically engages queer-feminist perspectives and transnational narratives of Modernism. She studied at the University of Cologne and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and received her doctorate from Middlesex University, London, with a dissertation on Formations of Gender and Sexuality in the Avant-Gardes. She has served as Curator at Kunsthalle Basel and as Curator at Large at Muzeum Susch, Switzerland, and was Lecturer at Zurich University of the Arts and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her exhibitions include Queer Modernism 1900–1950 (K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2025/26); The Laughing Torso (Frieze Masters, London, 2023); I Saw the Other Side of the Sun with You. Women Surrealists from Eastern Europe (Cromwell Place, London, 2023); Konkret Global! (Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg, 2022/23); Evelyne Axell. Body Double (Muzeum Susch, 2020); Land of Lads. Land of Lashes and Dimensions of Reality: Female Minimal (Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London and Paris Pantin, 2018/20). In 2004 she curated Flesh at War with Enigma at Kunsthalle Basel, the first survey exhibition in Western Europe since 1977 of the Polish-Jewish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow.
Thomas Kennedy is Curator of Modern British Art at Tate Britain. His projects include the major exhibitions Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant (2026), Edward Burra (2025) and Walter Sickert (2022), as well as collection displays Nina Hamnett (2026), Ethel Walker (2023-4) and After Industry: Communities in Northern England 1960s-80s (2022). He previously worked at Barbican Art Gallery where he curated the exhibition Vanessa Winship: And Time Folds (2018). At Tate Britain, he has played an active role in diversifying the national collection as well as conducting collection research into the representation of queer artists in the modern period.
Gemma Rolls-Bentley has been at the forefront of contemporary art for almost two decades, working passionately to champion diversity in the field. Her debut book Queer Art; From Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between is a Lambda Literary Award finalist and has been highlighted as a must-read by Them, Dazed, Timeout, The Guardian, Cultured and the FT. Her curatorial practice amplifies the work of female and queer artists and provides a platform for art that explores LGBTQIA+ identity. Gemma has curated for a range of international galleries and institutions, most recently Wolterton, Cardion Arts, Carl Freedman Gallery, ICA London, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and London Art Fair. In 2022 she curated the Brighton Beacon Collection, the largest permanent display of queer art in the UK, for Soho House Brighton. Gemma has taught at numerous institutions including the Royal College of Art, the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, and is a juror for the 2025 John Moore’s Painting Prize. She sits on the Courtauld Association Committee and the Leslie Lohman Museum Acquisitions Committee. Current exhibitions include Sea State at Wolterton (on until 7th December 2025) and She Sells Seashells at Alice Austen House (on until 21st February 2026).
