Image: Aspen Art Museum
‘Arch Connelly: Straighten Your Wig and Pray’ was on view at Aspen Art Museum from June 12 through October 11, 2026, as the first museum survey dedicated to the artist’s work.
The exhibition offered a comprehensive overview and contextualization of Connelly’s work from the late 1970s through 1993 and represented what the museum described as the culmination of unusually extensive research in both depth and scope. It included several works that had not been seen publicly for more than 35 years.
A Chicago-born artist, Connelly emerged as a vibrant figure in New York’s East Village art scene during the 1980s. He died in 1993 from AIDS-related complications.
Connelly also designed elaborate, sequin-covered sets for avant-garde theatre troupes including the Cockettes and the Angels of Light. In an interview around 1993, he described his approach by saying, ‘It made me realize that sculpture is furniture. Paintings are sets. Once you break down the high art–low art continuum, this constant bickering, it doesn’t matter.’
The exhibition’s outside wall featured Roberto Juarez’s video portrait ‘Portrait of Arch Connelly’ (1975), showing Connelly amid fabric, flowers and glitter in a blue wig and overalls. In ‘Blurry Self-Portrait’ (1987), sequins render a pixelated galaxy.
An Aspen Art Museum talk by art historian David J. Getsy placed Connelly’s pearl- and glitter-encrusted sculptures within debates over what counts as sculpture and where art ends and the rest of the world begins. Getsy contextualised the work within a counter-tradition that rejected austere modes of high art in favor of decoration, functionality, excess and glitter.
