About the GLBT History Museum

Nicoletta graphic

Located in San Francisco's Castro District, the GLBT History Museum is the first full-scale, stand-alone museum of its kind in the United States.

The museum celebrates 100 years of the city's vast queer past
through dynamic and surprising exhibitions and programming. For
the latest news on all our activities, sign up for our monthly e-mail
newsletter. To support the museum by becoming a member or
donor, click here.

MAIN GALLERY

Our Vast Queer Past:
Celebrating San Francisco's GLBT History

To honor the GLBT Historical Society's 25th anniversary, the curators of "Our Vast Queer Past" burrowed into every corner of the society's extraordinary archives. To spark the topics for the show, we picked an inspirational object from virtually every year the society has been acquiring collections. Our objectives: raising new questions about familiar gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender stories and evoking largely untold stories that speak eloquently about our diversity.

Graphic Gallery

The resulting exhibition offers a kaleidoscopic view of nearly a century of queer experience in San Francisco and the Bay Area. It does not form a single narrative; our history is too varied and unruly to be limited in that way. Instead, we bring together multiple stories, sometimes interlinking, sometimes isolated, sometimes in conflict.

All of them reflect deeply human themes: the search for companionship and pleasure; the struggle for self-determination and respect in an often-hostile society; the value of individual and collective expression; and the spirit, ingenuity and wit that have been keys to our survival

The exhibition is divided into the following thematic and biographical sections:

• Finding Our Hidden Histories
• Consuming Queers: The GLBT Marketplace
• The Strategy of Equality
• Body Politics: Questioning the Ideal
• Adrienne Fuzee: Queer Arts Visionary
• Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon: Progressive Pioneers
• Drag: Fashioning Our Existence
• On the Margin: Queers & Poverty
• Queers of Color Organizing
• Lou Sullivan: A Life Transformed
• Jiro Onuma: Undocumented/Documented
• Bar Life: Going Out
• Bathhouses: Coming Together or Waiting Outside?
• Lesbian Sex Wars
• Leather: Dark Desires, Public Pleasures
• Erotica: Drawn Out
• Sex Toys: Implementing Erotic Expression
• Out of the Closets & Into the Streets
• Military Matters: Divergent Duties
• Bois Burk: Under Surveillance
• Bearing the Scars: Violence & Trauma
• HIV/AIDS: Grief, Solidarity, Determination
• Tales of Our City

CURATORS

Gerard Koskovich, independent scholar, editor and antiquarian book dealer; founding member of the GLBT Historical Society.

Don Romesburg, assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Sonoma State University, Sonoma, Calif.

Amy Sueyoshi, associate professor of race and resistance studies and sexuality studies at San Francisco State University.


FRONT GALLERY


Great Collections From the
GLBT Historical Society Archives


Often referred to as the "queer Smithsonian," the GLBT Historical Society maintains one of the largest archives of GLBT historical materials anywhere in the world. This exhibition offers an introduction to the collections by displaying examples from a number of classes of materials the society has gathered during its first quarter-century. The exhibition also highlights the history of the institution itself, the ways in which researchers have used its archives, and their meaning for GLBT people and for society as a whole.

Graphic Milk

Personal belongings of Harvey Milk on display in the "Great Collections" exhibition.


The exhibition is divided into the following sections:

• Oral Histories
• Personal Collections
• Textiles
• Posters

• Film, Video & Sound
• Photographs
• Ephemera
• Periodicals

CURATOR
Paul Boneberg, executive director, GLBT Historical Society.

Mini-Exhibits

The front gallery of the museum also features regularly changing mini-exhibits displayed for two weeks to one month. Consisting of a single display case, these exhibits are mounted in conjunction with programs at the museum and often mark the anniversary of an organization or event that has played a significant role in the history of the GLBT community in San Francisco and Northern California.


Online Exhibitions

The GLBT Historical Society and The GLBT History Museum have mounted or sponsored several exhibitions available for viewing on an ongoing basis on the Web:

Passionate Struggle: Dynamics of San Francisco's GLBT History. An overview of the exhibition at our pop-up museum in 2008–2009. Tracing elements of our communities’ affinities and differences, the show took visitors from the bedrooms and back rooms to the bookstores and bars, from Harvey Milk’s victories to transgender sex workers’ riots, from social movements to secret fantasies. View here.

Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archives. GLBT Historical Society artist-in-residence E. G. Crichton has been matching living artists to the archives of the dead, asking each artist to invent a response in any medium. To see all work created so far, visit the Queer Cultural Center online gallery.

Dykes on Bikes: 30 Years at the Forefront. Cocurator Glenne McElhinney leads a fast and informative video tour of exhibition shown at the GLBT Historical Society in 2008. Watch it now.

OutRanks: GLBT Military Service From World War II to the Iraq War. An overview of the 2007 exhibition created by guest curator Steve Estes — the first museum show in the U.S. to focus on the experience of GLBT servicemembers and the American military policy on homosexuality. View here.

Capturing the Moment: The Photojournalism of Rick Gerharter. View the inaugural exhibit on our Flickr site: “Capturing the Moment: The Photojournalism of Rick Gerharter,” an encore version of a gallery exhibition shown at the GLBT Historical Society in 2006. View here.

Council on Religion and the Homosexual. The LGBT Religious Archives Network and the GLBT Historical Society present this special exhibit, which portrays the early years of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, a ground-breaking coalition of religious and homosexual activists in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. View here.

 

Location
4127 18th St.
San Francisco, CA 94114
(between Castro & Collingwood streets)

Days & Hours
Monday: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday – Saturday:
  11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Sunday: Noon – 5 p.m..

Admission
General: $5.00
California Students (with ID): $3.00
Members: Free
First Wednesday of the Month: Free for all visitors (sponsored by the Bob Ross Foundation)
.

Group Tours
Docent-led group tours of the museum are available by appointment. For more information, contact Aimee Forster, museum operations manager, at aimee@glbthistory.org.

Phone & E-mail
(415) 621-1107
info@glbthistory.org


Getting Involved

The GLBT Historical Society has opened its new museum in San Francisco's Castro District with generous help from foundations, business sponsors, individual donors and volunteers. You can join in supporting this long-held dream of the community by arranging a sponsorship, making a donation, signing on as a volunteer—or all three! For more details, click on the links below:

Sponsorship Opportunities
Donor Opportunities
Volunteer Opportunities

Sponsors & Supporters

Presenting Sponsor

Levi's logo

Platinum Sponsors
Badlands & Toad Hall
Bob Ross Foundation
David R. Kessler, MD
Human Rights Campaign
Walgreens
Union Bank

Gold Sponsors
Al Baum & Robert Holgate
John Bell & Jason Spicer
Harvey's
Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial Committee
Honey Soundsystem
Bob Michitarian

Silver Sponsors
AAA of Northern California,
  Nevada, & Utah
Troy Barber & Dan Stewart
craigslist
Robert Dockendorff
Estate of Judy Freespirit
S. Runi Goyal / Old Town Manor,
  Key West, Fla.
Ike's Place
Chris Lewis & Todd Reasinger
Peter Lundberg & James Mowdy
Dan Nicoletta
Emily Rosenberg & Darlene Ellis
Earl Stokes & Ross Moore
Andreas Weigend

Sponsors
Gary Booher
Paul Christensen
Elisabeth Cornu
Kevin Gerber
Golden Gate Business Association
Terence Kissack & Mark Coleman
Gerard Koskovich
   Queer Antiquarian Books
Bill Lipsky & Don Price
Jack Lasner
Jason Macario
Paul Margolis
Michael Moniz
Daniel Morvant
Stephen O. Murray
James Neale
Mark Segal
Jim Stephens & Abraham Brown
Sterling Art Services
David Van Virden
Joseph Wiedman
J. B. Wilson
William Woods
Michael Yang & Jim Kren

Museum Media

Museum Photos

Museum Opening:
Media Release

Museum Opening:
Media Coverage