ABOUT This Exhibition
Co-presented with the Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive, this exhibition celebrates Black, Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander trans and gender-nonconforming people who lived authentically at the intersections of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and class prejudice. Theirs was often a perilous choice, one that challenged societal boundaries and helped shape the visibility of trans and queer identities today.
Highlighting both performance and everyday expressions of identity, this exhibition features studio portraits of gender impersonators from Finocchio’s—the famed San Francisco cabaret—and the touring Jewel Box Revue, alongside candid photographs, activist materials, and self-portraits.
Featured figures include trailblazing performer Stormé DeLarverie, beloved activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Cuban-born Finocchio’s star David de Alba, Chinese performer and designer Li-Kar, and artist and writer Red Jordan Arobateau. Also represented are community organizers and activists such as Brenda Lee and members of the Filipino Task Force on AIDS, who fought for social and medical care for trans people during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
This latest installation at the GLBT Historical Society Museum honors the resilience and creativity of trans people of color who risked everything to live openly, create boldly, and fight for a freer, more just future.
About the Curator—Ms. Bob
Ms. Bob Davis served two terms on the GLBT Historical Society board of directors, one as secretary. She presented on two panels at Moving Trans History Forward 2020, University of Victoria, BC, Canada. She presented there in 2014 and 2018 as well. Her talk, “Glamour, Drag and Death: How Two Community Archives Preserve Art from the Era of HIV/AIDS,” was presented at the Archives, Museums and Special Collections Queering Memory 2020 conference in Berlin. After the presentation she was invited to turn the talk into an article for the “Trans and HIV/AIDS” issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly (Duke University Press), due out later this year.
Her autobiographical essay, “For As Long As I Can Remember…,” is included in Glimmerings (TransGender Publishing, 2019) an anthology of people relating when they first realized their transgender identity. Currently she is writing a chapter for Life Trips: Navigating Transgender Aging, Illness and End of Life Decisions, edited by Jude Patton and Margo Wilson. Ms. Bob teaches music at Napa Valley College and City College of San Francisco.
About the Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive
The Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive (aka LLTA or simply Louise) is CA’s only exclusively trans archive. Our mission is to empowers trans people through knowledge of their own history as we work to increase society’s understanding of transgender lives by making available the artifacts of transgender history. We are a primary resource for scholars, students, authors, artists, allies and the community at large. Open by appointment, https://lltransarchive.org.
About the GLBT Historical Society
Founded in 1985, the GLBT Historical Society is a global leader in LGBTQ+ public history. The Society collects, preserves, exhibits, and makes accessible to the public materials and knowledge to support and promote understanding of LGBTQ+ history, culture, and arts in all their diversity. In 2011, the Society established and continues operating the first museum of LGBTQ+ history and culture in the United States. Through the Dr. John P. DeCecco Archives, the organization maintains one of the world’s largest archival collections of LGBTQ+ historical materials.
EXHIBITION SPONSORS
This exhibition is made possible with generous support from the following institutions:
