Annual LGBTQ+ Material Culture Sale at Swann Auction Galleries Features Fine Art and More

Swann Auction Galleries will mark the seventh iteration of its LGBTQ+ Art, Material Culture & History sale this August. An annual event celebrating the creativity and history of the queer community, the 2025 edition presents 400 lots. Photographic prints by the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe and Laura Aguilar will be offered alongside paintings, books, and ephemera. Bidding will begin at 10:30 AM EDT on August 21, 2025. Here are some of the top lots in this year’s catalog. 

Hugh Steers

Leading the 2025 LGBTQ+ material culture sale is an oil on cotton canvas painting by Hugh Steers (lot #340; estimate: USD 40,000 – $60,000). Carl George, a 1984 portrait of the artist’s friend, is executed with impressionistic brushstrokes and muted colors. George sits against a kitchen table, one arm draping over a smaller portrait in the lower left. 

A Yale-educated American painter, Hugh Steers was known for his melancholic and metaphorical depictions of queer life in the 1980s and early 90s. He aimed to capture “the soft glow of brutality,” according to Alexander Gray Associates. Steers’ work focused on mundane moments that could spark compassion, empathy, joy, and anger in the viewer. Many of his subjects belonged to the LGBTQ+ community and were affected by the raging HIV/AIDS crisis of the time. The available painting, Carl George, was finished shortly before the artist was diagnosed HIV-positive. 

Glenn Ligon

A major work by American conceptual artist Glenn Ligon is another leading item in this sale (lot #355, estimate: $30,000 – $40,000). Black Like Me is a 1993 oil stick and gesso on woven paper composition that draws on the autobiography of the same name by John Howard Griffin. Ligon’s work belongs to a series that explores themes of racial inequality and disappearance. A single phrase, “I looked into the mirror and saw reflected none of the white Griffin’s past,” is repeated across the canvas. The words gradually smudge into unreadability. 

Appropriation and exploration of literary texts is a central feature of Ligon’s multimedia oeuvre. Beyond the Black Like Me series, he has explored the words of writers such as Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston in his text-based work. Ligon has also created art that draws attention to the experiences of Black gay men, adding context to other artists’ photography and exploring his own identity and family history. His work highlights the role of Black queerness within the broader Black Liberation movement. Today, Ligon continues to create new work and exhibits widely. 

Silence=Death Collective

Political ephemera will be offered in this LGBTQ+ material culture sale, including an offset lithograph poster from the Silence=Death Collective (lot #302; estimate: $15,000 – $25,000). This 1987 work dates from the first ACT UP printing. Now considered an iconic image from the era, the poster places stark white text against a black background. A pink triangle punctuates the text, symbolizing the LGBTQ+ community. The poster urges viewers to “Vote… Boycott… Defend yourselves… Turn anger, fear, grief into action.” 

The Silence=Death Collective worked in the early 1980s to raise awareness and increase activism around the AIDS crisis. They were best known for this poster, which was plastered on the streets of New York in 1987. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) eventually obtained the rights to the poster and reprinted it. The available edition dates from ACT UP’s first printing, which reproduced several typographical errors that appeared in the original. It measures 34 inches high by 22 inches wide. 

The 2025 LGBTQ+ Art, Material Culture & History sale at Swann Auction Galleries will begin live on August 21, 2025, at 10:30 AM EDT. To browse the complete catalog and register to bid, visit Swann Auction Galleries. 

Find Auction Daily’s coverage of Swann Auction Galleries’ annual LGBTQ+ history sale from 2022 and 2020. Find more art world news on Auction Daily’s news channel.