exhibitions
On View at the GLBT Historical Society Museum
Where We Made Room is a solo exhibition and archival installation by artist Aleo Landeta, exploring the queer and trans home as a space carved out, imagined, and fought for. Drawing on the GLBT Historical Society Archives, Landeta layers large-scale cyanotypes on silk with hand-drawn interiors based on the homes of Bay Area queer and trans elders, including Lou Sullivan, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, and Victoria Fernandez (Vicki Starr).
Archival images, personal photographs, original drawings, and a listening station come together as a living archive where intergenerational memory becomes a form of resistance. This history isn't finished. These rooms are still being built.
On View at YBCA
Co-organized with the GLBT Historical Society and co-curated by former Society Board Chair Tina V. Aguirre and award-winning author Caro De Robertis, 'Conjuring Power' weaves together epic murals, rarely seen documentary photography from the 1970s–80s, and queer-futurist video work — a potent blend of art, archive, and imagination.
The exhibition features archival materials from the Society, work from emerging artists from the Queer Ancestors Project, and audio from De Robertis' Elders Project oral histories, grounding visionary contemporary work in lived Bay Area history.
Permament Exhibitions
Queer Past Becomes Present
Main Gallery
Our long-term exhibition at the GLBT Historical Society Museum showcases photos, documents and artifacts telling the amazing stories of over a century of everyday queer life among the diverse populations of San Francisco.
The Original Rainbow Flag
Main Gallery
In 2021 the Gilbert Baker Foundation donated a recently discovered segment of one of the original 1978 eight-color rainbow flags to the GLBT Historical Society. The flag segment is now part of the Gilbert Baker Collection (2017-18), GLBT Historical Society.
Online Exhibitions
The GLBT Historical Society has curated over a dozen online exhibitions since 2019. Some are adapted from exhibitions that were on display at the museum; others are native digital shows. These are two of our most recent online exhibitions; click the button below to go to a page listing all of our online exhibitions.
Past Exhibitions
Click the button below to go to a comprehensive listing of exhibitions mounted since 2013, with images and descriptions of each show.
Exhibitions are made available solely for educational and research purposes. While many of our materials are suitable for all ages, some of our resources may contain sexually explicit content. These explicit materials are intended for adult audiences only. Permission to examine exhibitions is not authorization to copy, publish, store, record, or reproduce the materials. No license is granted to any materials, and all rights therein are reserved. If you need help accessing our exhibitions, guidance about the content of our materials, or if you wish to publish, reproduce, or otherwise make use of our materials, please contact info@glbthistory.org.
Banner image: The Dykes on Bikes, 1986; photograph by Chloe Atkins, used with permission, all rights reserved. Queer Past Becomes Present image: Photograph by Dave Earl. The Original Rainbow Flag: Photograph by Matthew Leifheit, courtesy of the Gilbert Baker Foundation.