A Hard Stare: Peter Hujar, Paul Thek, and Their Circle on Film

On the occasion of the publication of Andrew Durbin’s dual biography The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, MoMA presents a four-day screening program of work shaped by the legacies of these two artists.

The series includes footage of and by Peter Hujar and Paul Thek—alongside works by such friends and contemporaries as Gregory J. Markopoulos, Gary Schneider, Susan Sontag, and Andy Warhol. Over four evenings, Durbin will join writers, filmmakers, and curators in conversation about the many entanglements that defined Hujar and Thek’s underappreciated careers from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. This program and Durbin’s publication elucidate the complex, transnational, and radical ambitions of two artists, friends, lovers, and cultural figureheads who changed art in the second half of the 20th century.

Organized by Andrew Durbin, Editor-in-Chief, frieze magazine, with Stuart Comer, The Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance, and Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance.

Passport photos of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, 1962. © The Peter Hujar Archive/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, DACS, London