By: Dean Vaglia | Mount Clemens-Clinton-Harrison Journal | Published May 28, 2026
MOUNT CLEMENS — The Anton Art Center is continuing its tradition of an annual Pride Month show. But this time, it’s fully being done in-house.
Known simply as the “Pride Art Show,” this exhibit features 45 pieces from 28 artists from the local and national LGBTQ+ community.
“Having a Pride-themed art show hosted by the center is new,” said Stephanie Hazzard, the art center’s exhibition director. “We have not hosted a Pride art show of our own before. We’ve partnered, but this is our first solo project. It’s also our first national open call that we’ve held in a while. We held a few national open calls years ago, but it was prior to the pandemic, so we haven’t done a national call in a while.”
The call led to submissions from across the region and the United States, with works coming from artists as local as Washtenaw County and as far away as New York City and Florida.
Another first-in-a-long-time aspect of the show is its juror, Phil Gilchrist. Currently serving as the executive director of the nonprofit Advancing Macomb, Gilchrist is a founder of Macomb County Pride and served previously as the Anton Art Center’s executive director.
“I was really delighted when they reached out to invite me to be the judge for this particular art exhibit,” Gilchrist said. “I’ve kept in touch, and I’ve been somewhat engaged with the organization, but this was a really nice way to become more re-engaged.”
Jurying a show like this calls upon multiple aspects of Gilchrist’s qualifications and experiences. He pulled from his fine arts background, one that led him to the Art Center and the Macomb Art Institute Authority. He also called upon his own life experience as a gay man to whittle down the nearly 90 submissions to the final 45.
“A lot of what I look for, really, is sort of what’s the artist’s voice: What are they saying with their piece,” Gilchrist said. “I do have some interest in technical aspects of the work. How well was it put together? Does the technical nature of the work support the social message that the artist is putting forth? I did find, in this circumstance, that some of the titles that artists chose really spoke to me and helped me in some of those selections.”
The 45 pieces selected will be brought up to the Art Center’s second floor gallery, with the one major stipulation for the pieces being a 40-inch vertical limit. Works presented range in medium from paintings to sculptures to stained glass. Content of the works was also left open to the artists’ discretion, leading to Hazzard saying about a quarter of the show’s pieces being of a mature nature. Signs leading to the exhibit and online call for visitor consideration prior to entering.
“We do provide a content advisory for many exhibitions for a variety of different content, because different content may be sensitive to some populations that it isn’t to others and vice-versa,” Hazzard said. “We don’t censor our artists or artworks that are on display. If there is something that a particular viewer needs to decide to disengage with, we want to put that advisory out for all viewers to consider when they’re entering a space such as the center.”
Previous Pride Month shows at the Art Center have been done in partnership with Mighty Real/Queer Detroit, though Hazzard said issues related to grant funding led to the group being unable to support this year’s show. While the Clinton Township branch of national LGBTQ+ rights organization PFLAG came on to support the show — another first-time development, PFLAG being a new Art Center partner — the decision to host its own Pride show was one Anton Art Center officials made in service of the arts community.
“The Art Center is a public arts and culture organization that values inclusivity, diversity, equity, (and) access,” Hazzard said. “We feel it is important as a community partner to support groups, especially artist groups, that are in need of more opportunities, that have been overlooked or have been rejected, and I think the MR/QD project facing difficulty is an example of why that is important and needed.”
Gilchrist commended the Art Center’s decision to continue with the show in the face of societal pressures.
“In Macomb County in particular, the LGBTQIA community is not always very visible,” Gilchrist said. “Exhibits like this or programs by Macomb County Pride … help to really raise that visibility, even for the community itself. When, especially younger LGBTQ folks, see others like them, it encourages them to be themselves and helps encourage them to really be participatory in a larger community and show them they are not alone.”
The “Pride Art Show” runs at the Anton Art Center from Saturday, June 6 to Saturday, Aug. 1. An opening reception and awards ceremony will be held on June 6 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.