Toor attended
Aitchison College and
Ohio Wesleyan University, where he received a
Bachelor of Arts degree in 2006. He then obtained his
MFA degree from
Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn in 2009. Toor is a part of a loosely-affiliated group of
LGBTQ painters, sometimes called the
New Queer Intimists, which also includes contemporaries
Doron Langberg,
Louis Fratino, Kyle Coniglio,
Anthony Cudahy,
TM Davy, and
Devan Shimoyama. In 2019, Toor was awarded a grant from the
Joan Mitchell Foundation. From 2020 to 2021, Toor's recent paintings were the subject of a solo exhibition,
Salman Toor: How Will I Know at the
Whitney Museum of American Art. From 2021 to 2022, Toor's painting,
Museum Boys (2021) was on view at the
Frick Collection; as part of the artist residency and the exhibition,
Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters where it is placed in a room in conversation with two paintings by
Johannes Vermeer,
Officer and Laughing Girl (made between 1655 and 1660) and
Mistress and Maid (c. 1667). In 2022, in an exhibition similar to that at the Frick, Toor's works were placed in conversation with old master painting's from the museum's collection in the exhibition
No Ordinary Love at the
Baltimore Museum of Art in
Baltimore, Maryland. In 2023, the exhibition traveled in a modified version to the
Rose Art Museum at
Brandeis University. His partner is the New York-based Pakistani-American musician
Ali Sethi. == Work ==