Art To Be Seen advances public understanding and preservation of LGBTQ+ culture, history, and lived experience by commissioning LGBTQ+ artists from across the United States to create original works reflecting the diversity of LGBTQ+ American life. Through public exhibitions, educational programming, and archival preservation, the project expands public access to LGBTQ+ artistic perspectives and builds a lasting cultural record for future generations.

Where This Began

I grew up in Rustburg, Virginia, a small town near Lynchburg at the edge of the Blue Ridge. Everyone there knew your name, your family, and your business. For a kid figuring out he was different, it was a hard place to be seen.

The church I grew up around had a lot to say about people like me. Its influence didn't stop at the city limits. It shaped how people treated each other and what got said out loud on a Sunday. You didn't have to go looking for it. It was just the air.

I was looking for a way to feel something other than fear. A way to belong somewhere, even if that somewhere was just in my own head.

Art was it. Poetry, painting, music, refinishing old furniture. Anything that let me put something into the world that was mine. In a place where I kept so much of myself hidden, art was the one place I didn't have to.

That never really changed. I spent nearly two decades in Washington working on public policy and in the nonprofit sector, and I kept coming back to art. Not as a hobby. As the thing that kept me grounded in work that otherwise would have eaten me alive. Somewhere in there I realized that what carried me through was the same thing I'd relied on my whole career in a different form: storytelling. Art doesn't make an argument. It makes you feel something, and the feeling stays with you.

That's what led me to create Art To Be Seen.

Across the country, LGBTQ+ artists are making work that tells the truth about their lives. A lot of them are in towns like the one I grew up in, working with no funding and no one paying attention. Art To Be Seen exists to change that. We commission artists in every state and put their work in front of a national audience.

Our work is commissioning and exhibition. Artists keep control of what they make, and the work goes where people can see it. Over time, the collection will show what LGBTQ+ life looks like in every part of this country.

Alex Grant

Founder and Executive Director, Art To Be Seen