An Online Home for the Art & Artifacts Collection

By Mark Sawchuk & Ramón Silvestre

Most of us, if asked to do so on the fly, could probably come up with a working definition of the terms “art” and “artifacts.” But would you include items such as broken glass, picket signs and leather vests in your definition? We do! Our Art and Artifacts collection contains plenty of traditionally “artistic” treasures, including paintings, mixed-media works and photographs. But it’s also home to surprising, one-of-a-kind items, many of them rooted in the bars, buildings and even the sidewalks that make up the fabric of the city.

From Finocchio’s to Tinky Winky

We’ve got large-format theater photographs of famous performers who starred at Finocchio’s, the legendary North Beach nightclub, in the 1940s and 1950s. There’s a handful of colorful shards from a stained-glass window that was shattered in a state office building in San Francisco during the 1991 AB 101 riot (so named because it occurred after Governor Pete Wilson vetoed a bill that would have guaranteed statewide protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation).

We have business signs from long-gone San Francisco queer establishments, such as the Bagdad Café and the Artemis Café. And that’s just scratching the surface of a collection that also contains matchbooks, pins, buttons, coffee mugs, picket signs, and yes, a Tinky Winky “Teletubbies” plush toy, twenty years after Jerry Falwell outed the loveable purple fellow.

Undisturbed but Underutilized

Until now, these remarkable materials have lain largely undisturbed, but also underutilized, in the archives. While we had internal records of each item, they had not been cataloged or inventoried in a systematic way, and were difficult to serve to researchers. Thanks to a grant from the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workplace Development’s Historic Preservation Fund, the society has nearly completed a multiyear project that has assessed, documented and cataloged the entire collection.

We implemented the project in two phases. First, we surveyed the objects to create a definitive catalog and undertake any necessary conservation efforts for fragile or deteriorating items. Next, we digitally photographed each object in high resolution.

To make these materials available to you, we’ve created an online database on our website that contains photographs of approximately 350 of the over 600 items in the still-growing Art and Artifacts Collection, including all of the items described above. A separate page accessible from the main page houses those objects that contain adult content, and we’ll continue to add additional entries to the database as we research and establish provenance information for them.

Even before the COVID-19 crisis made it impossible for researchers to visit the archives in person, the Art and Artifacts Collection could not be enjoyed by the public as it deserved to be. So we are doubly pleased to make it available to you remotely. As you peruse the collection, we invite you to ask yourself: What objects excite you? Move you? Make you chuckle? Inspire you to learn more? If you have any thoughts, why not write and share them with us?

Mark Sawchuk is the communications manager at the GLBT Historical Society.

Ramón Silvestre is the registrar at the GLBT Historical Society.