About the event:

Peter Hujar (b. 1934, Trenton, New Jersey; d. 1987, New York) was a leading figure in the avant-garde counterculture, which flourished in downtown New York throughout the 1970s and 80’s. Born into a Ukrainian American immigrant family, he would later plant his roots in the heart of New York City’s East Village, where he would be enthralled by the world of performance art, music, theatre, and literature.

The focus of Peter Hujar: Rialto is the unveiling of three important bodies of work from the first fifteen years of his photographic career: Southbury (1957), Florence (1958), and the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo (1963). The exhibition additionally will pay homage to the body of work for which he is best known, his black and white portraits of the thinkers, artists, dancers and drag performers of the bohemian Downtown scene he inhabited. This includes portraits of Iggy Pop, Janis Joplin, and the ‘orgasmic man’ who became the cover star of Hanya Yanigihara’s A Little Life.

About Peter Doroshenko, Director, The Ukrainian Museum

Peter Doroshenko is known for his trailblazing approach to cultural institutions and for amplifying them to become topical and dynamic. For eleven years, before his arrival in New York, Doroshenko was the director at the Dallas Contemporary, Texas, the largest non-collecting contemporary art museum in the United States. He has held director positions at PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom; SMAK – Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; INOVA – Institute of Visual Arts, Milwaukee; and curator posts at both the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; and Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse. Doroshenko has organized over two hundred exhibitions over the past thirty-five years.

Image Credits:

1. Peter Hujar, Drag Ball, Hotel Diplomat (1), 1968, Courtesy The Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2 May – 1 September 2024, © The Peter Hujar Archive – Artists Rights Society (ARS)
2. Peter Hujar, Young Self-Portrait (IV), 1958, Courtesy The Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2 May – 1 September 2024, © The Peter Hujar Archive – Artists Rights Society (ARS)
3. Peter Hujar, Paul Thek on Zebra, 1965, Courtesy The Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2 May – 1 September 2024, © The Peter Hujar Archive – Artists Rights Society (ARS)
4. Peter Hujar, Girl on Swing, Southbury, 1957, Courtesy The Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2 May – 1 September 2024, © The Peter Hujar Archive – Artists Rights Society (ARS)
5. Peter Hujar, Palermo Catacombs #1, 1963, Courtesy The Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2 May – 1 September 2024, © The Peter Hujar Archive – Artists Rights Society (ARS)