The first museum in the United States
dedicated to showcasing the history of gay culture will open in San
Francisco on Thursday.
The
GLBT History Museum is a project of the GLBT Historical Society,
an archives and research center established in 1985.
A portion of a 1979 flyer produced by
the San Francisco Gay History Project is inscribed along one of the
museum's walls: “Our letters were burned, our names blotted out,
our books censored, our love declared unspeakable, our very existence
denied.”
“A quarter century after the founding
of the GLBT Historical Society, we're proud to open a museum to
showcase our community's history,” Paul Boneberg, executive
director of the group, said in a statement. “The GLBT History
Museum is in the heart of the Castro, a neighborhood visited not only
by locals, but also by tens of thousands of tourists every year who
come in search of queer culture.”
“At our museum, they'll discover
treasures from our archives that reflect fascinating stories spanning
nearly a century of GLBT life. We have gone all out to create a
museum as rich, diverse and surprising as the GLBT community itself.
Whether they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or straight,
visitors are sure to be moved, enlightened and entertained.”
The museum opens with two exhibitions:
Our Vast Queer Past: Celebrating GLBT History in the main
gallery and Great Collections of the GLBT Historical Society
Archives in the front gallery.
The GLBT History Museum follows in the
footsteps of Berlin's Schwules Museum, which opened its doors 25
years ago.