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NEW! AIDS Knows No Borders: Protesting the US Ban on HIV-Positive Migrants, 1990-1993
This exhibit features ephemera related to two instances of transnational organizing in which AIDS activists in New York and San Francisco played significant roles: (1) the boycott and protests against the 1990 and 1992 International AIDS Conferences, and (2) activism for Haitian refugees detained on Guantánamo Bay from 1991 to 1993 because the US government claimed they had HIV. These materials help us to understand the strategies that groups of AIDS activists who were largely accustomed to addressing their own life and death concerns in a domestic context used to activate audiences in defense of people who lived or originated outside of US national borders.
The City Nightclub: A Community of Queer Youth in Portland, Oregon, 1977-1997
Curated by Lisa Arellano. From 1983 to 1997, The City Nightclub was an all-ages gay nightclub in Portland, Oregon. By design, the venue made youth sexuality and sexual identity explicit, an acknowledgement that placed the club in a complex and often contentious relationship with local authorities and some members of the local community. The club’s history offers a vivid example of how state power seeks to manage and control youth sexuality through familial frameworks and the criminalization of desire. This history also reveals that the club was not merely a safe haven for Portland’s queer (and often homeless) youth, but a battle zone for the City of Portland and the club’s proprietor, who was a fierce critic of state policing.
Reclamation Projects: An Archive of Queer Latinidad, 1850-1921
Curated by Pablo Mitchell. This collection takes an expansive view of the history of queer Latinidad in the United States, drawing on a wide array of archival sources ranging from legal records and census documents to personal letters and newspaper articles. The documents assembled here reflect the considerable diversity of the U.S. Latinx community in the 19th and early 20th centuries as Latin American and Caribbean immigrants to the East Coast and Florida joined the country's long-standing Mexican-descent population in the United States.
Power, Politics, and Race in the 1968 Philadelphia Study of Prison Sexual Violence
Curated by Marc Stein. This exhibit focuses on a groundbreaking 1968 study of same-sex sexual violence in Philadelphia’s male prisons. The explosive report addressed racial dynamics, situational homosexuality, masculinity crises, and the causes of sexual violence. The exhibit’s primary sources include the 1968 Davis study, mainstream and LGBT media articles, and transcripts of U.S. Senate hearings. The introductory essay situates the Davis study in its time and place, discusses the media coverage, describes the responses of government officials and social scientists, and provides suggestions about how to interpret the primary sources.
