Bill Arning Exhibitions (BAE) was founded in 2019 by curator Bill Arning following a career that spanned four decades in the nonprofit art worlds of Cambridge, New York, and Houston. First conceived as a radical nomadic curatorial project that would mount exhibitions in a variety of international gallery, museum, and alternative art spaces, the current incarnation of BAE resulted from the pandemic travel restrictions of early 2020 and opened first in Houston before relocating to the Hudson Valley in 2023.

BAE’s original gallery space was a highly-visible storefront in October 2020 in the Montrose neighborhood—the spiritual heart of Houston’s alternative and gay community. The BAE space hosted traditional art exhibitions as well as events like poetry readings and dance, burlesque, and stand-up comedy shows, ushering in a distinctly new chapter in Arning’s curatorial practice and one that he cherishes for the sense of community it fosters.

In the summer of 2022, BAE opened a second space in New York’s Hudson Valley. The old storefront in Kinderhook has a distinctly different feeling as its primary audience includes former NYC art-scene folks who adopted a post-pandemic rural lifestyle and weekend visitors from the city—resulting in a unique interaction between culture and the natural environment. Built in 1812, the modest building and its gallery space is conducive to a quiet and contemplative experience with stunning natural vistas everywhere.

Best known for having organized early exhibitions of artists who today have since been honored with major museum retrospectives such as Lisa Yuskavage, Sean Landers, Marilyn Minter, Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon, Cady Noland, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Petah Coyne, Andres Serrano, Gary Simmons, Mary Weatherford, John Currin, and Jim Hodges, Arning sees BAE’s exhibition program today as extending the curatorial values he has manifested since organizing his first exhibitions in the mid-80s. His aesthetic prioritizes the interweaving of work that challenges convention and delicate sensibilities with a respect for the profound positive bodily and spiritual effects that result from visual pleasure. In choosing to organize shows today, Arning is demonstrating his faith that the next generation of art makers will continue those dialogues that matter.