LOCATION
GLBT Historical Society Museum
4127 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

ADMISSION
$10 admission; Free for GLBT Historical Society Members

RSVP and reserve tickets here

How did the world-renowned Castro neighborhood come to be known as the most prominent “gayborhood” in San Francisco? How do we trace the evolution and transformation of Eureka Valley, a sleepy, Irish Catholic residential neighborhood to the Castro as a center of LGBTQ+ activism, business, and community in the Bay Area?

Authors Jen Reck and Gerard Koskovich present their new booklet, The Castro: The Story of San Francisco's Best-Known LGBTQ+ Neighborhood. They will be joined by Tina V. Aguirre, director of the Castro LGBTQ+ Cultural District, and Devin McGeehan Muchmore, managing reference archivist at the GLBT Historical Society, who'll discuss the roles of their organizations in bringing the project to fruition. 

The Castro traces the history of this celebrated "gayborhood" back to the 1950s, focusing on LGBTQ+ community-building, cultural production and political engagement; on forces of opposition that targeted the neighborhood for attack; and on struggles around diversity, exclusion and belonging within the community itself. Copies of the publication will be available for purchase and signing.

SPEAKERS

Tina V. Aguirre (they/them) is Director of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District in San Francisco. A graduate of Stanford University with a BA in Communication, Tina has dedicated decades to grantwriting, documentary filmmaking, and arts festival production. Their leadership includes four years as Chair of the Board of Directors for the GLBT Historical Society. Tina curated the exhibition “Chosen Familias: LGBTQ Latinx Family Photo Albums” (2019) at the GLBT Historical Society Museum and is a published poet. They have lived in San Francisco since 1987.

Gerard Koskovich (he/him) is a public historian and book dealer who divides his time between San Francisco and Paris. A founding member of the GLBT Historical Society, he has been active in the movement to create LGBTQ+ archives and museums for more than four decades. Koskovich has curated numerous exhibitions and has presented and published widely in English and French. His writing has appeared in translation in Czech, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. He received the 2020 Clio Award from the GLBT Historical Society for his contributions to advancing the understanding of LGBTQ+ history.

Devin McGeehan Muchmore (he/him) is Managing Reference Archivist at the GLBT Historical Society. Previously, he contributed to archival projects at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives and the Labor Archives and Research Center at San Francisco State University, and served as Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and a M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons University.

Jen Reck (she/they) is is an Associate Professor of Sociology at San Francisco State University and earned their PhD in Sociology from UC Santa Cruz in 2005. They teach courses in Sociological analysis, Queer studies, interdisciplinary research methods, and applied Sexuality Studies. She is a co-author of the text Social Research Methods (Oxford University Press, 2021). Jen has researched lesbian intimate partner violence, debates over marriage equality, and marginalization of unhoused LGBTQ+ youth in San Francisco’s Castro District. Her current work involves community-engaged research focusing on the Castro’s history and current status as an LGBTQ neighborhood, examining placemaking, equity struggles, and queer displacement in the context of neoliberal urbanization.

Members Perks
Interested in becoming a member of the GLBT Historical Society? Members enjoy all sorts of perks, including free access to this event. Learn more.

LOCATION
GLBT Historical Society Museum
4127 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

ADMISSION
$10 admission; Free for GLBT Historical Society Members

RSVP and reserve tickets here

Lesbian businesses have never been just businesses. They have been sites of creativity, survival, mutual aid, and collective imagination.

Join us for an evening of conversation exploring the lesbian businesses, networks, and mutual aid infrastructures that shaped Bay Area community life — and what their legacy means for us today.

Presented in conjunction with Directory of Dreams: Bay Area Lesbian Economies and Radical Care, 1970–1995, this panel brings together organizers, historians, and community builders to reflect on what it took to cultivate spaces of survival and self-determination — and how that work continues.

At the center of the conversation is the Brick Hut Café in Berkeley — a lesbian-owned, collectively operated restaurant that became a political home, community anchor, and lived example of feminist ethics of care in action. From hiring practices to protest closures, the Brick Hut embodied a vision of economy rooted in shared values and collective responsibility.

Today's organizers continue this work across queer media networks, open mic nights, public art, and nightlife — transferring knowledge and cultivating the know-how required to access collective queer power.

What does it take to build spaces that hold us and last?

Moderator

Dr. Kerby Lynch (she/they) is the lead researcher and curator for Directory of Dreams: Bay Area Lesbian Economies and Radical Care, 1970-1995. Kerby is a Black lesbian scholar, community archivist, and cultural organizer based in Northern California. She is the Executive Director of the Bay Area Lesbian Archives and Director of Research & Facilitation at Ceres Policy Research. Trained as a geographer, her work centers Black queer histories, lesbian feminist economies, and community-based archives as tools of resistance, care, and collective power.

speakers

Joan Antonuccio (she/her) was born in San Francisco to a Catholic Sicilian dad and an LDS French-Irish mom, which meant Joan grew up religion-free. Being indecisive about one profession has led Joan to many careers -- her favorites: cooking, sound engineering, back-up singing, voiceover, and she has also produced several concerts. Joan has been out of the closet most of her life. Joan has had the privilege of being in amazing places at extraordinary times: in the recording studio for Cris Williamson’s The Changer and the Changed, she worked with Teresa Trull, Linda Tillery, Vicki Randle, Holly Near, June Millington, and others. She co-owned the most amazing cafe the world has ever known -- the Brick Hut in Berkeley, Calif., from 1976-1990, a safe place where the LGBT community gathered to practice activism and create LGBT culture.

Sharon De la Peña Davenport (she/her) is a radical lesbian feminist. Her life work as an archivist and poet is instructed and inflected by being a lesbian. An independent, professional archivist, Sharon’s contributions include the papers of the Third World Women’s Alliance, the Alliance Against the Oppression of Women, and the papers of Aileen Hernandez (with Lenn Keller), accessed at Smith College, Northampton, MA. She has also been a research assistant and copy editor for books and exhibitions by Tirza True Latimer, Renate Stendhal, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, and Arlene Goldfarb.

Sharon was a co-founder of the lesbian owned Brick Hut Café (1975 – 1997) in Berkeley, CA. She is the mother of Bart Davenport, a musician living in Los Angeles, CA. Sharon has published two books of poetry, Mountain Singing and Between Us. She has presented casual exhibitions of her watercolors at cafes and cafeterias. She earned a BA from Smith College and an MA from San Jose State University.

Kin Folkz (né Monica Anderson) (they/them) is an award-winning educator and multidisciplinary artivist building and sustaining community-rooted cultural ecosystems and equity-centered practices that uplift marginalized LGBTQIA+ communities.

As founder of the Queer Arts Center Gallery (QAC), Racism Under the Rainbow, and Spectrum Queer Media, Folkz has curated decades of exhibitions and cultural programming while establishing direct-service initiatives, including a Food Justice program that delivered over 40,000 meals during COVID-19 shelter-in-place. Their social justice practice extends to large-scale public art, serving as  lead artist and creator of the eight-block-long “All Black Lives Matter” mural at Lake Merritt—featured internationally, including in Complex—and as a lead designer for the “Black Trans Lives Matter” mural in San Francisco.

Folkz is a 2018 San Francisco Pride Grand Marshal featured in the award-winning documentary State of Pride, recipient of four Oakland mayoral proclamations, and honored with a State Citation of Honor from the Alabama House of Representatives.

Members Perks
Interested in becoming a member of the GLBT Historical Society? Members enjoy all sorts of perks, including free access to this event. Learn more.

LOCATION
GLBT Historical Society Museum
4127 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

ADMISSION
$10 admission; Free for GLBT Historical Society Members

RSVP and reserve tickets here

More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld — the “Einstein of Sex” — became renowned for his groundbreaking theory of sexual relativity. Nearly 100 years after the Nazis burned his books and hounded him from the queer mecca he helped build, Hirschfeld’s vision of sexuality and gender as continual and fluid, rather than rigid binaries, has never been more important.

Join the GLBT Historical Society for an Author Talk and book signing with journalist Daniel Brook, in conversation with historian and Society founding member, Gerard Koskovich. Brook will highlight Hirschfeld’s 1931 visit to the Bay Area, including a tour of San Quentin State Prison, during which he advocated for Black transgender inmates ensnared by California's capriciously enforced law against consensual oral sex.

About the book:

In this new biopraphy, journalist Daniel Brook retraces Hirschfeld’s rollicking life and reinvigorates his legacy, recovering one of the great visionaries of the twentieth century. In an era when gay sex was a crime and gender roles rigid, Hirschfeld taught that each of us is their own unique mixture of masculinity and femininity. Through his public advocacy for gay rights and his private counseling of patients toward self-acceptance, he became the intellectual impresario of Berlin’s cabaret scene and helped turn his hometown into the world’s queer capital. But he also enraged the Nazis, who ransacked his Institute for Sexual Science and burned his books.

Driven from his homeland, Hirschfeld traveled to California, Asia, and the Middle East to research sexuality on a global scale. Through his harrowing lived experience of antisemitic persecution and a pivotal late-in-life interracial romance, he began to see that race, like gender, was a human invention. Hirschfeld spent his final years in exile trying to warn the world of the genocidal dangers of racism.

The Einstein of Sex at last brings together this unsung icon’s work on sexuality, gender, and race and recovers the visionary who first saw beyond the binaries. A century after his groundbreaking work—as book bans, gender panics, and the fascist politics of “us” and “them” threaten anew—Hirschfeld’s gift for thinking beyond the confines of his world has much to offer.

 Copies of The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

This event is co-sponsored by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco.

Speakers

Daniel Brook (he/him) is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. His previous book, A History of Future Cities, was longlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize and selected as one of the ten favorite books of the year by the Washington Post. Brook has received numerous research and writing grants including a Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and a Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowship from the Biographers International Organization. Born in Brooklyn, raised on Long Island, and educated at Yale, Brook lives in New Orleans.

Gerard Koskovich (he/him) is a San Francisco historian and rare book dealer. A founding member of the GLBT Historical Society, he has been active in the movement to create LGBTQ archives and museums for nearly four decades and has curated numerous exhibitions. Koskovich has presented widely, including talks at the Ecole du Louvre, Kyoto University and Oxford University. His writing on LGBTQ history and culture has been published extensively in English and French.

Members Perks
Interested in becoming a member of the GLBT Historical Society? Members enjoy all sorts of perks, including free access to this event. Learn more.

LOCATION
GLBT Historical Society Museum
4127 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

ADMISSION
$15 admission; Free for GLBT Historical Society Members

RSVP and reserve your tickets here

Visit a gay bar in New York, Los Angeles, or even Nashville on a random weeknight and you might stumble onto a drag performance. In San Francisco, by contrast, drag is more deliberate — highly advertised, less spontaneous, and concentrated in only a few venues.

What can the community do to make this iconic subculture more abundant here? And how can we foster a greater diversity of drag expression in the city?

Join Unspeakable Vice’s Shawn Sprockett and a slate of local luminaries as they explore the past, present, and future of drag in San Francisco — and discuss how queer art can be better supported by the queer community.

Speakers

MODERATOR: Shawn Sprockett (he/him) is an Adjunct Professor at the California College of Arts in the graduate Interaction Design program, where he teaches visual design and creative thinking. He started developing Unspeakable Vice, a volunteer-based queer history walking tour project, in 2018. The project explores lesser known stories of LGBTQ San Francisco, particularly the influence of People of Color and women in the development of queer culture and activism.

Sister T’aint A Virgin (she/her) has been a fully professed member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for nearly 15 years, joyfully serving her community through humor, compassion, and advocacy. In her secular life as a Nurse Practitioner, she blends her professional commitment to health with her ministry promoting sexual wellness and acceptance. With equal parts heart and sparkle, Sister T’aint embodies the Sisters’ mission to “promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt”—one blessing, one laugh, and one glitter blessing at a time.

VERA! (they/them) is an Armenian-American trans and nonbinary drag king. They are the co-host of the Rebel Kings of Oakland, the oldest drag king troupe on the West Coast; co-host of Save Her! environmental drag show with Pattie Gonia; Creative Director of Drag Story Hour Bay Area; and board member of Oaklash Bay Area Drag Festival. VERA! is Mx. Starsearch, Saint Rebellious sainted by Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and proud drag father of the House of Pack with 42 children and a dozen grandchildren and great grandchildren. They also serve as the Senior Director of Philanthropy at Alameda Health System Foundation, fundraising for the safety net health system for Alameda County.

Vin Seaman (they/them) is a drag performer (LOL McFiercen), interdisciplinary artist, and the founder of the THEYFRIEND Nonbinary Performance Festival. Their work exploring queer identity and drag culture has been presented at The Stud, Brava, Oasis, El Rio, CounterPulse, the de Young, the Salesforce Tower, Frameline, the Tank NYC, the Austin International Drag Festival, SATELLITE ART SHOW Miami, the National Queer Arts Festival, Stockholm’s Stolt Scenkonst, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Yale School of the Arts. Learn more about their efforts to create a permanent home for nonbinary joy at bit.ly/nourishnonbinaryjoy.

Members Perks
Interested in becoming a member of the GLBT Historical Society? Members enjoy all sorts of perks, including free access to this event. Learn more.

LOCATION

The Roxie Theater
3117 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

ADMISSION

$15 admission; Discounted $7 tickets for GLBT Historical Society Members

RSVP and reserve tickets here

Co-presented by The Roxie Theater and Bay Area Lesbian Archives (BALA).

In Celebration of Lesbian Visibility Week

Join the GLBT Historical Society in partnership with The Roxie Theater and Bay Area Lesbian Archives for a screening of the documentary, “Sally!”, followed by a post-show discussion on the importance of archiving lesbian lives, triumphs, and activism.

“Sally!” the feature documentary begins with Sally Gearhart at the height of her powers in the 1970s. She was one of second-wave feminism’s most beloved icons, penned a cult classic fantasy novel about a female utopia and fought one of history’s greatest battles for queer rights shoulder-to-shoulder with Harvey Milk. But fast forward to 2008 and Sally has been largely forgotten by history—not to mention erased from the Hollywood film “Milk.” Yet rather than simply resurrecting her legacy and glorifying one woman’s story, “Sally!” now takes a more collectivist turn. The film traces Sally’s life trajectory through the eyes of the exceptional women who fought for justice by her side, revealing that Sally not only instigated the political movements that made her famous but was also deeply shaped by them. Finally, when we revisit Sally in 2014, she is living alone on Women’s Land, without the community she helped create. What happened and what will become of her legacy?

Courtesy of Women Make Movies

SPEAKERS

Deborah Craig (she/her) is an award-winning documentary director and producer whose films use compelling personal stories to raise awareness about the challenges and strengths of underrepresented communities. Her work has played at LGBTQ+, women’s and documentary film festivals in the U.S. and internationally. Deborah’s most recent short, “A Great Ride,” a 33-minute documentary about lesbians and aging, premiered at the Frameline LGBTQ+ Film Festival in San Francisco in 2018, was picked up for distribution by Frameline, has screened at over 50 film festivals around the globe, and has won multiple awards. “Sally” will be her first feature-length documentary. Deborah has a BA in history from Columbia University, did undergraduate work in photography at California College of the Arts, and has a Master of Public Health from San Francisco State University, where she currently teaches in the Public Health Department.

Ruth Mahaney (she/her) moved to San Francisco in 1971, when she was 26 years old and had just come out as a lesbian. She taught women’s studies at Santa Rosa Junior College, Sonoma State University, San Francisco State University (SFSU) and now teaches LGBTQ American History at the City College of San Francisco. Mahaney was a member of the collective that ran Modern Times Bookstore for 35 years, and served on the board of directors of the GLBT Historical Society for 20 years. She was a colleague of Sally Gearhart’s at SFSU, and both were part of a group called the Lesbian Caucus which formed after the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk to lobby the city to promote lesbian rights. Other members included Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, Pat Norman, Roma Guy and Donna Hitchens.

Ondine Rarey (she/her) is a filmmaker, editor, and writer. Her documentary “Fools and Heroes” was a Grimme-Preis nominee (the German equivalent of an Emmy), airing on ARTE in France as well as stateside on PBS. She has edited well over a dozen documentary features and shorts, including “Now en Español” (for PBS), “A Great Ride,” “Who Will Write Our History” and, “Rebel Hearts,” an official selection at Sundance 2021. She has edited on multiple TV series, including “Keeping up with the Kardashians” and “Alien Encounters.” Ondine received a BA from UC Berkeley in History and a BFA in Documentary and Journalism from the Munich University for Television and Film in Germany. She currently resides in Southern California, where she teaches Documentary Editing at Chapman University.

M Tillotson (any pronouns) is a community archivist and historian, activist, carpenter, and angry working-class butch dyke. M organizes intergenerational community spaces and events with the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, where she helps transform archiving into a relational practice—one that centers queer joy and the slow labor of collective memory. A strong believer in direct action, M is currently facing state repression—alongside other dykes and trans folks—for her anti-Zionist activism. 

Location

The Roxie Theater (Big Roxie), 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Admission

Admission is $7 for GLBT Historical Society members and $15 for non-members. Tickets can be purchased on The Roxie Theater’s website. This event will likely sell out, so guests are encouraged to reserve their tickets early. Tickets are available here.

Join the GLBT Historical Society

Become a member of the GLBT Historical Society for free museum and program admission, discounts in the museum shop and other perks throughout the year.

Step Back in Time to the Glittering Era of Disco!

Get ready to party like it’s Studio 54 at this disco-themed party at The Academy SF!

This unforgettable night will feature a Best-Dressed disco costume contest, and a celebration of the legendary Sylvester, the Queen of Disco.

In honor of Sylvester’s iconic legacy, the event will showcase special archival material provided by the GLBT Historical Society, offering a rare glimpse into the life and artistry of this trailblazing performer. Relive the magic of March 11, 1979, when Mayor Dianne Feinstein declared “Sylvester Day”in San Francisco, commemorating his groundbreaking performance at the War Memorial Opera House—a night that elevated disco to the city’s most hallowed halls of art and culture.  

Register here today!

LOCATION

GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114

ADMISSION

$10 admission; Free for members

RSVP and reserve tickets here

Join renowned photographer and artist Mariette Pathy Allen inconversation with Ms. Bob Davis and Jesse Egner as they discuss Mariette's latest book, I Was The Girl: Art by Vicky West, published by MATTE Editions.

For nearly five decades, Mariette Pathy Allen has captured the lives and stories of gender-non-conforming communities through herlens. Mariette’s newest book, co-edited by Jesse Egner, preserves and honors the legacy of Vicky West, a groundbreaking transgender illustrator and artist. Vicky co-founded Drag Magazine in 1971, a pioneering publication that celebrated trans and drag culture while advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and visibility. Vicky served as art director of Drag Magazine from its inception in 1971 until its final issue in 1983. In addition to her work with Drag Magazine, Vicky, known as Dirk in her male identity, had a distinguished career as an executive art director at Abrams Books until her retirement in 2000.

This book features 64 of Vicky’s original illustrations, including some of her iconic Drag Magazine covers, exploring themes of beauty, femininity, fashion, fantasy, and desire, often with playful naughtiness and wry humor. In addition to these illustrations, the book includes 18 intimate photographs of Vicky taken by Mariette, as well as written contributions, including an essay by Ms. Bob Davis, that explore Vicky's experiences, cultural context, and artistic process.

Copies of I Was The Girl: Art by Vicky West will be available for purchase and author signing at the event.

SPEAKERS

Mariette Pathy Allen (she/her/hers) has been photographing transgender communities for nearly five decades, pioneering visibility through five books: Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them (1989), The Gender Frontier (2004), TransCuba (2014), Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Burma and Thailand (2017), and I Was The Girl: Art by Vicky West (2024). Her work is in numerous major collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the National Gallery of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and others. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is being archived by Duke University. Beyond gender, Allen has a number of series exploring family, birth, juxtapositions, fantasy, and everyday life. Allen lives in NYC and is represented by CLAMP.

Ms. Bob Davis (she/her/hers) is the founder and director of the Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive in Vallejo, CA. She served two terms on the GLBT Historical Society Board of Directors. She presented a talk, “Glamour, Drag and Death: How Two Community Archives Preserve Art from the Era of HIV/AIDS,” at the Archives, Museums and Special Collections (AMLS) Queering Memory conference in Berlin in June 2019. An article based on the talk will be included in the “Trans and HIV/AIDS” issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly (Duke University Press). Ms. Bob teaches music at Napa Valley College and City College of San Francisco.

Jesse Egner (he/they) is a queer artist and educator currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Often taking the form of playful and absurd portraiture, his work explores themes such as queerness, body image, collaboration, and humor. He received his BA from Millersville University and his MFA from Parsons School of Design. His work has been exhibited and published globally and is included in the permanent collection at the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts. He is a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship recipient and has participated in residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Bunnell Street Arts Center, Studio Vortex, Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, and the TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image. 

Location

GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114

Admission

Admission is free for members and $10 for non-members. This event will likely sell out, so guests are encouraged to reserve their tickets early. Tickets are available here.

Join the GLBT Historical Society

Become a member of the GLBT Historical Society for free museum and program admission, discounts in the museum shop and other perks throughout the year.

LOCATION

GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114

ADMISSION

$10 admission; Free for members

RSVP and reserve tickets here

In 1889, a 23 year old queer Italian wrote to celebrated French novelist Émile Zola about his desires, his loves and his hesitations regarding his gender identity. The young man bares his soul and hopes the novelist will create a character in his image.

Zola instead passed the autobiography along to a medical doctor, who published parts of the text. The beautifully written coming-of-age tale is a rare first-person testimony documenting how queer men cruised in an era before apps, reveals what they did once they “matched” and demonstrates that love between men indeed existed at that time.

Antwerp-based historian Michael Rosenfeld's new book offers a translation of the unexpurgated original autobiography and a historical discussion of its sources and context: The Italian Invert: A Gay Man's Intimate Confession to Emile Zola (Columbia University Press).

Join us at the GLBT Historical Society Museum on Thursday, January 16, 2025, for a look into the life of the "Italian invert," Rosenfeld's archival research and the enduring significance of 19th-century queer life and culture. Rosenfeld will offer an overview of the book and will take part in a conversation with historian Gerard Koskovich.

Copies of The Italian Invert: A Gay Man’s Intimate Confession to Emile Zola will be available for purchase and author signing at the event.

SPEAKERS

Michael Rosenfeld (he/him) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Flanders Research Foundation in Belgium and works on collaborations between queer intellectuals in France, Belgium and the Netherlands between 1885 and 1910. The Italian Invert: A Gay Man’s Intimate Confessions to Émile Zola, published by Columbia University Press in 2022 is a translation from the French book (2017); it has also been translated into Spanish (2023). Michael Rosenfeld has published many articles in academic journals on Francophone literature and on queer history.

MODERATOR: Gerard Koskovich (he/him) is a public historian and rare book dealer who divides his time between San Francisco and Paris. He contributes frequently to popular and scholarly media, has presented and published widely in English and French, and has curated numerous exhibitions on LGBTQ history. He is a founding member of the GLBT Historical Society.

Location

GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114

Admission

Admission is free for members and $10 for non-members. This event will likely sell out, so guests are encouraged to reserve their tickets early. Tickets are available here.

Join the GLBT Historical Society

Become a member of the GLBT Historical Society for free museum and program admission, discounts in the museum shop and other perks throughout the year.

LOCATION

GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114

ADMISSION

$10 admission, free for members.

RSVP and reserve tickets here

The GLBT Historical Society is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2024 by presenting Red Reminds Me…, a program of seven videos reflecting the emotional spectrum of living with HIV today. 

Red Reminds Me… will feature newly commissioned videos by Gian Cruz (Philippines), Milko Delgado (Panama), Imani Harrington (USA), David Oscar Harvey (USA), Mariana Iacono and Juan De La Mar (Argentina/Colombia), Nixie (Belgium), Vasilios Papapitsios (USA).

Through the red ribbon and other visuals, HIV and AIDS has been long associated with the color red and its connotations—blood, pain, tragedy, and anger. Red Reminds Me… invites viewers to consider a complex range of images and feelings surrounding HIV, from eroticism and intimacy, mothering and kinship, luck and chance, memory and haunting. The commissioned artists deploy parody, melodrama, theater, irony, and horror to build a new vocabulary for representing HIV today.

The title is drawn from the words of Stacy Jennings, an activist, poet, and long-term survivor with HIV, who writes: “Red reminds me, red reminds me, red reminds me…to be free.”* Linking “red” to freedom, Jennings flips the usual connotations of the color and offers a new way of thinking about the complexity of living with HIV. Just as a prism bends and refracts light, Red Reminds Me…, expands the emotional spectrum of living with HIV. It shows us that while grief, tragedy, and anger define parts of the epidemic, the full picture contains deeper, nuanced, and sometimes contradictory feelings.

Following the screening will be a panel discussion and talkback in response to the films, featuring local San Francisco professionals, activists, and artists working around HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and community resource building.

Visual AIDS is a New York-based non-profit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.

*Jennings recites this poem in the video Here We Are: Voices of Black Women Who Live with HIV, created by Davina “Dee” Conner and Karin Hayes for Day With(out) Art 2022: Being and Belonging.

Watch the program trailer below:

Video SynopseS

Gian Cruz, Dear Kwong Chi
In Dear Kwong Chi, Cruz creates a video letter to the late artist Tseng Kwong Chi, drawing from the experience of living with HIV in diaspora. Across continents and decades, Kwong Chi’s legacy acts as an anchor for Cruz amongst limited representations of Asian narratives in AIDS histories.

Milko Delgado, El Club del SIDA
Taking its title from a sensational telenovela episode, El Club del SIDA cycles through a lifetime of heavily stigmatizing images about HIV and AIDS. Delgado plays with multiple aesthetics—documentary, horror, comedy—to explore the various relationships he has had with AIDS over the course of his life. 

Imani Harrington, Realms Remix
Through a collage of poetry and archival images, Realms Remix traces memories and sensations of an AIDS past that continue to haunt the present.

David Oscar Harvey, Ambivalence: On HIV & Luck
Ambivalence: On HIV & Luck tackles the disorienting experience of existing with a manageable condition that our present culture insists on representing in terms of its bleak past. Interested in figuring HIV differently, the film presents a series of visual puns merging the iconography of HIV and AIDS with popular symbols of luck. 

Mariana Iacono and Juan De La Mar, El VIH se enamoró de mi (HIV Fell in Love With Me)
HIV Fell in Love With Me tells the story of a woman with HIV embracing her sexuality and reconnecting with her pleasure. Filmed with an erotic aesthetic, the video reflects a pursuit towards sexual justice and autonomy for women living with HIV.

Nixie, it’s giving
Through home videos, archival footage and textile landscapes, it’s giving explores various forms of family across time. The artist's domestic life is paired with archival video of queer and trans chosen families mirroring small acts of joy, resistance, and sustenance. What does it mean for an HIV+ person, who carries the history and present of the AIDS-crisis in their DNA, to foster new life?

Vasilios Papapitsios, LUCID NIGHTMARE
Papapitsios describes LUCID NIGHTMARE as a “meditation on how we can(not) heal in the environments that make us sick, from the perspective of an infected neurodivergent faggot.” Combining auto-fiction with magical realism, Papapitsios humorously reimagines narratives around mental health and chronic illness.

SPEAKERS

Vince Crisostomo (he/him) is a gay Chamorro (Pacific Islander) who has been living with HIV for more than three decades. He believes in the power of community and is passionate about bringing healthcare and social justice equity to people of every sexual identity, HIV status, gender, race and age. Over his 30-year career, Mr Crisostomo has worked in the US and Asia Pacific region as an HIV educator and executive director for community-based organizations, including the Coral Life Foundation and 7 Sisters. From 2009 to 2010, he served as the UNAIDS Asia Pacific NGO delegate, and more recently, as Co-Chair of the HIV and Aging Work Group of San Francisco’s Long-Term Care Coordinating Council. In 2019, Mr Crisostomo was honored as a Community Grand Marshal for the SF Pride Parade and Celebration. He is currently the Director of Aging Services at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. In 2024, the National AIDS Memorial Grove recognized Vince with the Thom Weyand Unsung Hero Award in recognition of his decades of advocacy.

Lance Dwyer(he/him) has worked in HIV prevention, care, and general direct services for 16 years. Lance first started as a peer leader for a HIV prevention youth group known as AQU25A at San Francisco Community Health Center (known then as A&PI Wellness Center). After leaving the organization in 2010 to earn his master's in social welfare from UC Berkeley, he returned in 2016 as a full-time therapist. His role within the agency has evolved over the past 8 years to be clinical supervisor, workforce transformation manager, associate director of mental health services, and now in his current role as associate director of organizational learning. Lance continues to hold a small case load of therapy clients as well as provide support for the Joy Luck Club, SFCHC’s cherished 34-year old institution serving A&PI’s living with HIV.  

Derrick Mapp (he/him) has been with the Shanti L.I.F.E. Program in San Francisco since 2000, initially as a program volunteer, as an emotional health support counselor and group facilitator, and since 2018 as senior services care navigator. From the late 1980s, he has been a direct service provider in the mental health/substance use and harm reduction/recovery communities, with short involvement in ACT-UP Philadelphia and ACT-UP New York subcommittees. After seroconverting in the 1990s, he began his community advocacy activities in HIV treatment and prevention research networks.

Location

GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114

Admission

Admission is free for members and $10 for non-members. This event will likely sell out, so guests are encouraged to reserve their tickets early. Tickets are available here.

Join the GLBT Historical Society

Become a member of the GLBT Historical Society for free museum and program admission, discounts in the museum shop and other perks throughout the year.

The GLBT Historical Society Museum is free to all visitors on the first Wednesday of every month. Tickets are not available online on free days; all visitors will be welcomed to the museum as long as there is capacity on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have any questions regarding an upcoming free day, contact us at tickets@glbthistory.org.

This free day is sponsored by the Bob Ross Foundation our 2024 Lead Sponsor. Click here to learn more about sponsorship opportunities.

LOCATION

GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114

ADMISSION

Free Admission, $10 suggested donation

RSVP and reserve tickets here

On Thursday, November 7th, the GLBT Historical Society and Queer Rebel Productions presents "Give Us The Word: Queer Yesterday, Today, and Forever", a powerful literary exploration of Queer and Trans BIPOC history.

Held at the GLBT Historical Society Museum, this event is curated by Crystal Mason and features four talented writers crafting new works inspired by the museum's exhibition, “Queer Past Becomes Present.” The evening will celebrate how queer history shapes our present and inspires future generations to build inclusive communities that embrace diversity. Following the readings, a short panel discussion will offer insight into the creative process and the ways in which history continues to fuel queer and trans resilience.

Join us for an unforgettable evening of storytelling, reflection, and celebration of Queer and Trans BIPOC voices!

SPEAKERS

Crystal Mason (they/them) is an Artist, Activist, Cultural Worker, Facilitator, and Co-Founder of Queering Dreams. Crystal makes art because they want to tell people something about themselves. They want to say something about being black and queer, fat and black, and being angry and full of love. they want to reveal the fear, hope, and danger they live with. They want to remember joy and connection, rage and grief. Art-making is a tool against oblivion. What we create is a tribute to our existence, to our resistance.

Ms. Momos (Therese Davis) (she/her) is a SF Bay Area Social Practice Artist, Administrator, Soul Coach, and Social Media, Event Planning, and Marketing Specialist Contractor, Ms. Mo has an extensive background in the arts. Ms. Mo is a Queer Rebel Fellowship, San Francisco Emerging Artist Professions Fellowship Cohort IX Alumni, lifelong activist and artist whose earliest memories involve advocating for voting equality and civil rights. Her extraordinary social justice lens contributes to these extraordinary times as she weaves her talents as a vocalist, songwriter, composer, dancer, sketch comedy writer, curator, painter, visual artist, lyricist, producer, improvisational singer, storyteller and founder of SF Songbird Festival Music Festival into the bay area art, music, culture and change maker community. She has worked as an artist project and performance manager, recorded seven CDs, worked for 10 years as a hired session back-up vocalist, and performed internationally at small and massive venues.

Mason J. (he/they) is a Blaxican-Indigenous and Sephardic Jewish artist, historian, and community organizer based on Ohlone Land (San Francisco). As a queer writer, visual artist, and disability justice advocate, Mason amplifies marginalized voices. They served as interim Executive Director of Radar Productions 2022-2023, contributing to projects like SFPL's Show Us Your Spines residency and teaching for the Queer Ancestors Project. Mason's work with Still Here SF and Give Us the Word reflects their commitment to challenging societal norms through innovative projects.

Tijanna O. Eaton (Tə-zha-na; she/her) is a Black butch writer whose work appears in Panorama Journal, Honey Literary, Noyo Review, and Yellow Arrow Vignette. She received the 2021 Unicorn Authors Club Alumni award, was a 2023 Rooted & Written Fellow, and was the nonfiction judge for the 2024 Best of the Net contest. Her memoir, BOLT Cutters, is the story of her 12 arrests in three years in the early 1990s during the height of the crack epidemic. Tijanna is program director for the Unicorn Authors Club BOLT Cutters cohort. She has served on the Five Keys Schools and Programs Board of Directors since 2006, becoming Board Chair in 2021. She also served on the board of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project from 2016 to 2018 and was co-creator of a queer people of color recovery conference in the late ‘90s. Please visit https://www.bolt-cutters.com for more information.

Joshua Merchant (they/them) is a Black Queer native of East Oakland exploring what it means to be human as an intersectional being. A lot of what they’ve been exploring as of late has been in the realm of what it means to be a “Delectable Negro” in a world with an insatiable appetite for Blackness and the many ways we show up spiritually, mentally, and physically. They address the countless exaggerations of white fantasy as a means of humanizing the Black Queer experience through a lens only someone who grew up ashy and yet a teardrop slicker than the average lesson any Corner-Store-Prophet could provide. They've had the honor to witness their work being held and understood in literary journals such as 580Split, Roi Fianeant Press, Snow Flake Magazine, Corporeal, Anvil Tongue, Verum Literary Press, Ice Floe Press, Mongoose and elsewhere. They have also received the 2023 San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award for poetry and was nominated for the 2023 Best of the Net Poetry Award by Spare Parts Lit.

Location

GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114

Admission

Admission is free for this event, though a $10 donation is suggested. This event will likely sell out, so guests are encouraged to reserve their tickets early. Tickets are available here.

Join the GLBT Historical Society

Become a member of the GLBT Historical Society for free museum and program admission, discounts in the museum shop and other perks throughout the year.

The GLBT Historical Society Museum is free to all visitors on the first Wednesday of every month. Tickets are not available online on free days; all visitors will be welcomed to the museum as long as there is capacity on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have any questions regarding an upcoming free day, contact us at tickets@glbthistory.org.

This free day is sponsored by the Bob Ross Foundation our 2024 Lead Sponsor. Click here to learn more about sponsorship opportunities.