(Enter Pirates.) takes its title from a surprising stage direction in Shakespeare’s Pericles. In the middle of a dramatic scene, pirates storm the stage and send the story in an entirely new direction. The artworks in this exhibition create disruptions of their own, inviting visitors to look again at familiar subjects including beauty, landscape, the body, visibility, labor, and performance.

Across the galleries, beauty reveals questions of belonging and exclusion. Landscapes become more complex than they first appear. Visibility can offer recognition while also carrying risk, and performance becomes a way to explore identity, desire, and how people move through the world.

Presented in three rotating acts over the course of a year, (Enter Pirates.) brings together works from the museum’s collection with select loans, promised gifts, and new acquisitions. As artworks enter and leave the galleries, unexpected connections emerge, expanding the stories a museum collection can tell and the possibilities of what queer art can be.

Image: Viola Frey, Position #1B, 1988, Oil on paper, Gift of the Estate of Gladys M. Rubinstein

Paul Cadmus, 1904-1999, Teddo, Lithograph, Edition 138/200, Gift of the Estate of William Grady Butler