Past Exhibitions
The GLBT Historical Society mounts several temporary exhibitions at the museum every year.
This page documents our past exhibitions. Click the title of an exhibition for more information about it.
2024
You are Here: Claiming your place in history
Opened April 11, 2024
You Are Here is an intentionally incomplete exhibition, offering an interactive timeline of some important moments in LGBTQ history, and an open invitation to become a part of the generations long movement to preserve our vast queer past.
API Family Wall of Pride
January - June 2024
Curated in collaboration with Asian and Pacific Islander Family Pride, the Wall of Pride exhibition invites visitors to dive into stories from parents and families who, through their courage and faith, reclaimed the strong family ties and proud sense of interdependence so characteristic of Asian and Pacific Islander (API) families.
Doris Fish: Ego as Artform
April 2023 - March 2024
Doris Fish was larger than life. So were her talent, her ambition, and her ego. This exhibition showcases her fabulous life, drag and impact.
2023
Curve Magazine Cartoons: A Dyke Strippers’ Retrospective
July 2023 – January 2024
The landscape of lesbian cartoons in the 1990s was small yet vibrant; full of passion, satire, self-deprecation, and deep-cutting political and social commentary. Curated in collaboration with the Curve Foundation, this exhibition showcases cartoons that were published in Curve magazine (formerly Deneuve magazine)
Matchmaking in the Archive
April 2023 – June 2023
Matchmaking in the Archive built on E.G. Crichton’s seven-year project with the GLBT Historical Society to match living individuals to the archives of people whose lives are embedded in the archives. She asked each participant to get to know their archive match and invent a response in any media. This exhibition showed some of the portraits E.G. made of living participants as they interacted with their archive matches. The exhibition coincided with the release of a book, Matchmaking in the Archive: 19 Conversations with the Dead and 3 Encounters with Ghosts, part of the new Q+Public series from Rutgers University Press. Copies of the book are available in our online book shop.
2022
Out in the World: Ireland’s LGBTQ+ Diaspora
March 2022 – March 2023
This exhibition tells stories of Irish LGBTQ people who have emigrated and found opportunities to live and love abroad. This exhibition was previously on view at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin. The GLBT Historical Society is proud to inaugurate the exhibition’s run in the United States.
The Flag in the Map: Charting Rainbow Flag Stories
April 2022 – April 2023
The Flag in the Map project documents people flying their pride flags, however they are able, in all parts of the world. Participants are asked to share what the pride flag means to them, and a selection of the responses are on display in this installation and in additional exhibitions around the world. This educational project is a partnership between the Gilbert Baker Foundation and ReportOUT. Learn more about this project by visiting gilbertbaker.com/flaginthemap.
2020
Reigning Queens: The Lost Photos of Roz Joseph
Online since September 21, 2020
This exhibition presented evocative photographs of San Francisco’s epic drag and costume balls of the mid-1970s.
Angela Davis: OUTspoken
Online since August 10, 2020
This exhibition drew on rare posters and ephemera from a private collection to highlight the journey of black lesbian activist Angela Davis: from radical scholar, to political prisoner, to revolutionary icon, to public intellectual.
AIDS Treatment Activism: A Bay Area Story
Online since July 1, 2020
Flyers, photographs, ephemera and audiovisual materials document the rise of and growth of the treatment-activism movement in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s and 1990s.
Labor of Love: The Birth of San Francisco Pride, 1970-1980
Online since June 15, 2020
Documents how San Francisco forged the internationally renowned annual celebration that would come to be known as Pride.
50 Years of Pride
Online since May 15, 2020
Photographs document the evolution of the San Francisco Pride parade, over the past half century.
Performance, Protest & Politics: The Art of Gilbert Baker
Online since April 15, 2020
Examines how rainbow-flag creator Gilbert Baker blurred the lines between artist and activist, protester and performer.
2019
Chosen Familias: LGBTQ Latinx Stories
June 7 – October 20, 2019
“Chosen Familias” examines queer Latinx stories by documenting real-time, real-life Latinx relationships.
The Mayor of Folsom Street: The Life and Legacy of Alan Selby
May 16 – October 20, 2019
This exhibition recounts the story of “Daddy” Alan Selby, the founder of the iconic South of Market leather and kink emporium Mr. S Leather, within the context of a changing SoMa neighborhood and the emergence of a distinct leather and kink culture.
SoMa Nights: The Queer Nightclub Photography of Melissa Hawkins
February 15 – May 27, 2019
This exhibition highlighted the extraordinary vitality of queer nightlife in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) district during the darkest years of the AIDS crisis. It focused on the work of Melissa Hawkins, a young photographer for the San Francisco gay weekly The Sentinel and other publications from 1986 to 1994.
Two-Spirit Voices: Returning to the Circle
January 31 – May 5, 2019
This exhibition celebrated the 20th anniversary of Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits (BAAITS), an organization committed to activism and service for the Two-Spirit and ally communities of the San Francisco Bay Area.
2018
A Picture Is a Word: The Posters of Rex Ray
October 2018 – February 2019
“A Picture is a Word: The Posters of Rex Ray” surveys graphic works dating from the 1990s to 2014 by San Francisco queer artist Rex Ray (1951–2015).
The Briggs Initiative: A Scary Proposition
September 2018 – January 2019
In November 1978, Californians decisively voted down Proposition 6, a ballot initiative that would have given the state the power to fire both LGBTQ teachers and supporters for LGBTQ rights. This exhibition documented the campaign to defeat the measure.
Empowerment in Print: LGBTQ Activism, Pride and Lust
March – September 2018
With one title on display for every letter of the alphabet, each drawn from the over 5,000 titles preserved in the archives of the GLBT Historical Society, this exhibition highlighted the history and diversity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer periodicals produced in Northern California from the 1940s through the 2000s.
Part of this exhibition, entitled “Pioneering Periodicals,” can be viewed online here.
Angela Davis: OUTspoken
February – September 2018
This exhibition drew on rare posters and ephemera from a private collection to highlight the journey of black lesbian activist Angela Davis: from radical scholar, to political prisoner, to revolutionary icon, to public intellectual.
2017
OUT/LOOK and the Birth of the Queer
October 2017 – January 2018
This unique multimedia exhibition explored the story of OUT/LOOK, a groundbreaking national queer quarterly published in San Francisco from 1988 to 1992. It matched 38 culture-makers to one of the 17 back issues of the magazine to find inspiration for new works.
Picturing Kinship: Portraits of Our Community by Lenore Chinn
June – September 2017
“Picturing Kinship” offered a 35-year overview of portraits in painting and photography by San Francisco artist Lenore Chinn. The subjects of the artist’s portraits are individuals who have contributed to the diversity of San Francisco’s cultural landscape in such fields as poetry, visual and performing arts, film, rock music, academia and the LGBTQ movement.
This exhibition can be viewed online here.
Lavender-Tinted Glasses: A Groovy Gay Look at the Summer of Love
April – September 2017
Mounted for the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s Summer of Love, “Lavender-Tinted Glasses” revisted this history by highlighting the roles of four queers in the making of the Summer of Love: gay poet Allen Ginsberg, gay filmmaker Kenneth Anger, bisexual philosopher Gavin Arthur and bisexual rock star Janis Joplin.
Beartoonist of San Francisco: Sketching an Emerging Subculture
January – May 2017
“Beartoonist of San Francisco” explored the contributions of cartoonist Fran Frisch to the development of the bear community, a subculture that developed in the 1980s to celebrate older, larger, hairier, ruggedly masculine gay men who were largely excluded from standards of attractiveness in gay popular culture.
2016
Noche de Ambiente
October 2016 – February 2017
“Noche de Ambiente” opened a window into the meanings of ambiente—literally meaning “atmosphere” or “environment”—as reflected in Latino drag performance and LGBTQ and AIDS activism in San Francisco from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Through Knowledge to Justice: The Sexual World of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
October 2016 – March 2017
This exhibition provided an introduction to the life, work and legacy of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), a defender of homosexual and transgender people in Germany and beyond.
Stroke: From Under the Mattress to the Museum Walls
July – October 2016
A traveling exhibition mounted at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City and at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, “Stroke” presented a historical retrospective of erotic illustrations by artists who worked for gay men’s magazines from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Dancers We Lost: Honoring Performers Lost to HIV/AIDS
April – August 2016
“Dancers We Lost” was a special traveling exhibition that was part of a comprehensive dance history project honoring performers who died due to complications of HIV/AIDS.
Feminists to Feministas: Women of Color in Prints and Posters
March – July 2016
Featuring 29 beautiful posters drawn from the archival collections of the GLBT Historical Society, “Feminists to Feministas” illuminated the role of women of color in the evolving cultural messaging of queer prints and posters.
2015
Reigning Queens: The Lost Photos of Roz Joseph
October 2015 – March 2016
This exhibition presented evocative photographs of San Francisco’s epic drag and costume balls of the mid-1970s.
Thirty Years of Collecting Art that Tells Our Stories
May 2015 – March 2016
This exhibition showcased drawings, paintings, and three-dimensional artworks that are part of the GLBT Historical Society’s Art & Artifacts collection.
2014
1964: The Year San Francisco Came Out
May 2014 – May 2015
This exhibition celebrated the pivotal moment when San Francisco’s queer community, spurred on by an infamous LIFE magazine story, began to define themselves on their own terms.
BiConic Flashpoints: Four Decades of Bay Area Bisexual Politics
May 2014 – April 2015
Centered around four “flashpoints” in bisexual history, “BiConic Flashpoints” surveyed the story of the San Francisco Bay Area’s bisexual activism.
2013
Legendary: African American LGBTQ Past Meets Present
February – April 2013
Showcases the dynamic and diverse history of Bay Area Black LGBTQ lives, reflecting themes of art, belonging, justice and sexuality.