Revisiting 1969, Part Two: The Year of Gay Liberation

1969: The Year of Gay Liberation on view at the New York Public Library between June 1, 2009 – June 30, 2009, Jason Baumann, Curator.

Exhibitions of contemporary history always risk becoming more celebratory than analytical and 1969: The Year of Gay Liberation was no exception. Documenting the year between the messy and misunderstood Stonewall Rebellion and the first New York Gay Pride March in 1970, this small exhibition unabashedly sympathized with its subject matter and screamed – “yeah, we finally fought back!”

And how could it not? Those of us who identify with or care about the struggle for basic civil rights in this culture cannot absorb or discuss this material dispassionately, even if it is now forty years old. The individual and organizational stories chronicled here are dramatic and compelling – drag queens who refused to be passively herded into police vans, scraggly members of the emerging and bold Gay Liberation Front, feminist lesbians proudly naming themselves The Lavender Menace, upending Betty Friedan’s famous disdain.

The objects preserved and presented here, all from the LGBT archives of the NYPL are gritty, scrappy, and fragile. They are mimeographed announcements, grainy photos, staple-pricked fliers, articles torn from magazines and newspapers. But this is potent ephemera, never coolly displayed or distantly interpreted. This is emotional territory, so emotional that many still don’t view it as legitimate history. Why have there been so few projects of LGBT history here in Philly?

Jason Baumann, exhibition curator and Coordinator of LGBT Collections at The New York Public Library claims “The year 1969 marks the first time homosexuals united, demanded, and were willing to fight for full inclusion within American society. As a result of the actions taken during this time gays and lesbians marked a paradigmatic shift not only in the ways that they saw themselves but also in how the world would see them.”

Maybe so. But I would argue that this exhibition is so celebratory that it forgets its context. Stonewall was in many ways a culmination of decades of civil rights work by homosexuals, rather than a catalyst. A rite of passage rather than a birth. On July 4, 1965, a group of gays and lesbians marched in front of Independence Hall at the first national march for homosexual rights (there’s a state historical marker in front of the Hall marking this event – really – go see it). And after World War II, many gay people chose to stay on the West Coast rather than return to their small towns. It was there, in California in the 1950s, that the first large-scale gay rights organizations in the U.S. formed, with hundreds of members (the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis).

This isn’t to deny the importance of documenting the story of Stonewall, or this exhibition and its presentation of these ordinary, extraordinary objects. The celebration is in many ways understandable. Jason Baumann’s appointment as a curator of LGBT collections is in itself a bold act worth celebrating. Pursing a truly inclusive practice of history remains an ongoing, complicated project. Those of us in the public history field know that the presentation of history is contentious, imperfect, fluid, and crucial. That’s why we go to work every day.

Bill Adair is the Director of Heritage Philadelphia Program.

From the Field: What’s more Fun than a Bus-full of Museum Professionals?

I have worked in many parts of the country during my museum career, but nowhere have I had the marvelous professional development opportunities offered in Philadelphia, thanks in large part to the Heritage Philadelphia Program. On Wednesday, May 13, I had the good fortune to join an HPP-assembled group of about 20 regional colleagues for a trip to New York City. The purpose of the trip was to visit the newly-renovated and opened Museum at Eldridge Street and Potion Design Studios, the developers of one of the museum’s main interpretive tools.

One of the great benefits about traveling with HPP groups is that you not only get to see other museums, but you get to meet the site’s staff members and ask them all those process questions we wish we could ask when we visit cultural institutions with family and friends. At the Museum at Eldridge Street we were able to meet with Hanna Griff-Sleven and Amy Stein Milford, who generously took time out of their work day to answer “why” and “how” questions from our inquisitive group.

Our visit to the Museum at Eldridge Street began with a tour by Miriam, one of their fabulous docents. The tour started in the lower level of the building, which includes a still-used small synagogue space for the Orthodox congregation, the museum’s gift shop, and the interpretive/exhibit space. The most attention-grabbing part of the space was definitely the interactive “tables” designed by Potion. These high-tech tables are actually surfaces onto which an interactive computer program is projected. With these tables, visitors are able to see 3D maps of the historic neighborhood, create, view and e-mail community newspaper pages based on actual newspaper stories, and simulate the painstaking restoration of the main synagogue.

From the exhibit area, we moved upstairs into the beautifully restored synagogue. As in all restored spaces, it was difficult to imagine what it looked like before the renovation, but thankfully the museum left some visual clues, including a section of a balcony wall not restored. Our group also got to vote on a real preservation issue facing the museum staff: what to do with the main window in the synagogue, where original stained glass was replaced by glass block at some point in the synagogue’s history.

After a hectic but very filling lunch, our group traveled to Potion Design Studios where we learned more about the design and development of the interactive exhibits at the Museum at Eldridge Street. We also learned about some of Potion’s other projects, and even got to see some of their work-in-progress.

Everything we saw throughout the day made for great informal discussions on the bus ride home: what is the role of technology in interpreting historic spaces and collections? Does technology necessarily enhance learning and visitors’ experiences? How can institutions with modest budgets implement cutting-edge technology? And while we didn’t arrive at any definitive answers (I think we would have needed a longer bus ride for that!) the discussions were very engaging and thought-provoking.

Andrea (Ang) Reidell is the Education Specialist at National Archives, Mid-Atlantic Region.

The Restored Synagogue at The Museum at Eldridge Street

Interactive Tables at The Museum at Eldridge Street

It’s not Easy, Greening NYC…

…and the “Growing and Greening New York” exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York’s explains precisely why.  MCNY has developed an exhibit detailing the city’s environmental challenges and how PlaNYC intends to address them. 

The city’s admirable (if unpronounceable)PlaNYC  initiative strives to “improve the city while confronting climate change,” focusing specifically on the city’s land, water, air, transportation, energy, and climate change.  Mayor Bloomberg’s goal in creating PlaNYC is to enhance the quality of living and decrease the carbon footprint for today’s 8 million New Yorkers as well as the additional 1 million who will live there by 2030. 

As the website details, some of PlaNYC’s goals include planting 1 million trees by 2017, ensuring every resident is a 10-minute walk from a park, achieving the cleanest air quality of any big city in the US, and reducing global warming emissions by 30 percent. 

The exhibit walks the viewer through a day in the life of a typical New York resident, starting with the 7 a.m. shower, the 8 a.m. commute to work, 6 p.m. shopping, etc.  Each of the 7 portions of the day/exhibit does an in-depth study on one focus of PlaNYC’s.  For instance, the 7 a.m. shower section details how much water is used by New Yorkers daily, how it gets from the pipes underground to the residences and businesses above ground, how to save water with low flow shower heads, and so on. 

One of the exhibit’s pieces of new media is the ActivStudio by Promethean.  This interactive white board projects an image onto the screen and allows the user to further explore by touching the screen’s hot spots with the “magic pen.”  While in theory very cool, the resolution of the screen was such that I had to back up about 3 feet to read it, then walk back to the screen again to touch it and continue to the next section.  It would have been a wonderful medium for the content (the screen explained about the different species of trees in Central Park and their locations), but it was ineffective and disappointing. 

“Growing and Greening New York” also had an indigestible amount of content. While viewing the exhibit, I was nearly asphyxiated by the word smog (though I admittedly spent the rest of the weekend spouting random facts to anyone who would listen).  There was simply too much information to absorb.  In the food/shopping section, for example, practically the whole of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma was crammed into one 6-foot-long table.   If I wasn’t already naturally interested in the topic, I would have found it easy to breeze through the exhibit in 20 minutes (as many others did). 

With no artifacts in the exhibit, and only a few historical references (to the city’s 160-year-old pipes, for example), historians may question the appropriateness of this exhibit in a traditionally historical museum.  MCNY’s mission statement—“to explore the past, present, and future of New York City”—however, enables this museum to exhibit a wide variety of topics.  I found the focus on the future very appropriate, given PlaNYC's mission and the nature of climate crisis in general; and any more content (be it past, present, or future) may have sent viewers' heads spinning and lost the audience completely.

What do you think?  Does the focus on the future and lack of history diminish the historical authority of this museum?  Does it attract audiences or lose them?  Tell us what you think by clicking “comments” below!

“Growing and Greening New York” is at the Museum of the City of New York until April 12.

Mary Gen Davies, a recycling addict, is Program Associate at Heritage Philadelphia Program.