American LGBTQ+ Museum Comes To Oldest Museum In New York City As Part Of Expansion

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New York’s oldest museum will soon expand to include a museum dedicated to LGBTQ history.

Representatives of the New York Historical Society, founded in 1804, announced earlier this month that the museum would expand by 70,000 square feet to include space for the American LGBTQ+ Museum.

Set to open in 2024—although it has already begun hosting digital programming—the new museum will be New York City’s first museum dedicated to global, national and local LGBTQ history and culture. Museum leaders hope to begin holding physical exhibitions next year, in partnership with the Historical Society and other cultural institutions across the city, according to Richard Burns, chairman of the LGBTQ+ American Museum.

Richard Burns, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the LGBTQ+ American Museum, Courtesy of Richard Burns

Through exhibitions, contributions from scholars, public programs and collaborations with other LGBTQ institutions, the museum will aim to serve as a “school for activists” by highlighting “the lives of LGBTQ people not normally reflected in our cultural institutions today,” Burns said. He added that this means highlighting the stories of those who lived through decades of LGBT struggle, activists currently pushing to change laws for LGBT people, and transgender youth being targeted for bills at state houses across the country.

“These stories have to be told,” he said. “We all need to understand the consequences of public policy and culture on the lives of the people who live here.”

Burns, a longtime nonprofit group executive who led the LGBTQ community center in Manhattan for two decades, and a group of fellow LGBT advocates met “in people’s living rooms” in early 2017, he said, to start thinking about how Make their LGBTQ Museum dream a reality. While the idea of ​​creating the museum had already been circulating among activists for years before those meetings began, a slew of lawsuits seeking religious exemptions for companies and organizations that did not want to serve LGBT people have been following the 2015 Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage. That prompted them to move forward about four years ago, Burns said.

“This political context has prompted us to say, ‘We need to record and present the history of our movement and the lives of LGBT people, highlighting both the discrimination and suffering of vulnerable people, as well as the resilience, determination and determination to achieve equality, freedom and liberation.

To define their approach to the museum and its programs, the Constituent Assembly has partnered with outside companies to run English and Spanish focus groups with LGBTQ people throughout New York City’s five boroughs, and has also commissioned a survey that has been completed by more than 3,200 LGBTQ people nationwide.

Those efforts made it clear that “a culture can be a mirror, and people who feel invisible in the larger culture, want a mirror that reflects their lives and stories and affirms that we exist,” Burns said, adding that the programming would be produced from many-sided perspectives, recognizing the different in which gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and nationality influence the experiences of LGBT people.

He added that the museum will also offer a mix of interactive events and more traditional programmes, such as exhibitions, to attract a wide range of visitors.

“What we’re hoping for is to experiment with the methods of engaging with the museum so that people feel they belong in it, feel welcome – and that can take a lot of different approaches,” Burns explained.

A cross-section of the expansion project of the New York Historical Society. Robert AM Stern Architects

He said the American LGBTQ+ Museum has received funding from individuals and foundations, and is still raising funds to appoint its first CEO. According to the New York Times, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council last week committed $35 million to the Historical Society’s expansion project, which will also include classrooms, study areas and storage space on a now vacant plot — which the organization has owned since 1937 — next to its home in Upper West Side at Central Park West and 77th Street.

Burns added that New York City’s rich LGBTQ history, including the famous 1969 Stonewall Uprising, makes it an ideal home for the future cultural establishment.

“A lot of our movement happened in New York City,” he said. We thought, ‘This is definitely where this museum is.’ “

Additionally, the city is home to about 756,000 LGBTQ adults—making it the metro area with the largest number of LGBTQs in the country—and is the number one destination for American LGBTQ+ travelers, according to data compiled by the museum from the NYC Tourism Agency & Company.

The museum will be one of several cultural initiatives dedicated to shedding light on LGBTQ history: Burns has cited the National Stonewall Museum and Archives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco and the Gay Museum in Berlin as institutions doing similar work, along with the National History Archives. For the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan and the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn. Museum of American LGBTQ+ also intends to feature stories collected by oral history projects, including The Generations Project and I’m From Driftwood, according to Burns.

“It is our vision, our dream, and our goal to cooperate with all these efforts and make a presentation of the work they are doing,” he said. “We’re part of a movement, and part of our mission is to provide a platform for all of the other History Queer projects that are in various stages of development.”

The new museum’s futuristic home within New York’s oldest museum will also allow for a special kind of collaboration, according to New York Historical Society president and CEO Louise Merer, who added that the initiative illustrates the ongoing need to re-examine historical narratives and focus. Stories that are otherwise ignored.

“It underscores the fact that history is about the agency – and it’s not about the long past that no one can question,” she said. “This special story of the American LGBTQ+ movement is one that must be recorded and preserved for future generations. The exciting part of this is that the oldest museum in New York is at the forefront of ensuring that history has a future.”

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