The exhibition “The First Homosexuals” at the Kunstmuseum Basel turns a spotlight on the early visibility of same-sex desire and gender diversity in the arts. Showcasing around 100 paintings, photographs, works on paper, and sculptures, it illuminates how new visions of sexuality, gender, and identity took shape after 1869—the year when the word “homosexual” first appeared in print. The multifaceted presentation frames perspectives on queer networks, intimate portraits, coded desires, colonial entanglements, and bold life choices.
The term “homosexual” first came into use in the German-speaking world in 1869 and underwent a substantial shift over the following decades. Debate over its meaning ranged from a universal capacity for same-sex love to the idea of a “third sex.” Over time, the term came to describe a minority who embraced same-sex desire—precisely the obverse of the term’s original intention. During those decades, artists grappled with the issue in a wide variety of ways: they portrayed friends and lovers, captured the everyday lives of couples, or experimented with gender roles. Art offered them the latitude and the creative means to express realities and ideas for which there was as yet no appropriate language.
The exhibition explores the nascent creative engagement with these subjects in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Across thematic sections, it highlights artists and writers who openly explored—and at times embraced—homosexual and trans identities. It follows the evolution of the nude in dialogue with shifting ideas about sexuality and shows how friendship and familiar art-historical tropes served as discreet (and in some cases not so discreet) codes for same-sex desire. The exhibition also looks beyond Europe, examining how many European artists saw same-sex desire as a quality almost inherent in colonial territories, and, in response, artists across the world challenged and resisted this colonial domination.
“The First Homosexuals” retraces both the cultural and artistic output and the early history of the LGBTQIA+ community. The exhibition demonstrates the mutual formation of homosexual and transgender identities and traces the emergence of a distinctly trans identity as envisioned by modern artists following the coining of the term ‘trans’ in 1910. The Basel adaptation of the exhibition that originally was shown at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago combines international loans—many of which have never been on display in Switzerland—with the Kunstmuseum’s own ample holdings. Seen together, the works offer insights into the genesis of a concept that is now an integral part of people’s identities and contemporary life.
There will be a vernissage of this exhibit on Friday, March 6, from 18:30-21:00. All are welcome, and entrance is free.

Website
kunstmuseumbasel.ch/en/exhibitions/2026/the-first-homosexuals

Where
Kunstmuseum Basel
St. Alban-Graben 16
4051 Basel

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