There’s something uncanny about experiencing Arch Connelly’s work now, more than three decades after his death. The paintings, sculptures, and collages gathered for Straighten Your Wig and Pray seem to arrive from somewhere just beyond time, carrying traces of another era while resisting any attempt to be confined by it.
This summer, Aspen Art Museum will present the first museum survey dedicated to the artist, bringing together works that span the late 1970s through 1993, the year Connelly died from AIDS-related complications. Some of the pieces have not been publicly seen for more than 35 years. Their return is triumphant, a feeling of a resurfaced voice that has remained present all along, quietly echoing beneath contemporary conversations around queer identity, craft, and beauty.
The exhibition is supported by Valentino, which will also extend the presentation beyond the museum through a curation of exclusive works at its Aspen boutique. The initiative, conceived by Alessandro Michele, opens a dialogue between fashion and art through a shared appreciation for transformation, ornament, and self-invention.
Connelly approached decoration as a way of telling stories. His practice moved between painting, sculpture, and collage, drawing from the theatrical spirit of San Francisco’s counterculture and the restless creative energy bursting out of New York’s East Village. What emerged was a body of work that comfortably occupied multiple worlds at once, where fine art met craft, camp brushed against sincerity, and glamour carried traces of grief.
Before New York, there was San Francisco, where the unparalleled artist designed sets for the Cockettes and Angels of Light, communities that embraced transformation as a creative act. By the time he arrived in the East Village in 1980, he had developed a visual language shaped by reinvention and possibility. You can feel it throughout the exhibition. Landscapes shimmer with heightened color. Familiar forms slip into fantasy. Objects seem to dress themselves for the occasion of being seen.
Another story moves beneath those surfaces. The late visionary belonged to a generation of queer artists whose lives and communities were profoundly shaped by the AIDS crisis. That history settles gently over the work, bringing with it an awareness of fragility and the fleeting nature of time. The pieces carry that weight without becoming burdened by it. Joy remains everywhere.
It appears in the playful details, the extravagant surfaces, and the sense of wonder that animates even the most melancholic works. Connelly’s art leaves room for loss while continuing to reach toward pleasure, beauty, and connection where the work understands vulnerability and refuses to let it eclipse everything else.
More than 30 years after his death, Connelly’s vision continues to glow. Across every embellished surface and dreamlike landscape is a belief in imagination’s ability to transform the world around us, and ourselves along with it.
