After years of consideration, the Oakland Museum of California decided it would edge out of the mainstream to explore the state’s LGBTQ history and culture — that is, the stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning people.
So the new exhibit in the museum’s Great Hall skirts the spotlight of familiar gay achievement. Don’t expect much about “Tales of the City” author Armistead Maupin, comic Marga Gomez or insurance commissioner Richard Lara, the first openly gay statewide office holder. Or Lily Tomlin and her spouse Jane Wagner.
Instead, “Queer California: Untold Stories” (through Aug. 11) tracks down people like this:
- Jose Sarria, a World War II Army veteran who worked as a cocktail waiter and performer in San Francisco. He took on the persona of the “widow” of the city’s flamboyant 19th-century “Emperor” Norton. He was the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States. (He got 6,000 votes for the Board of Supervisors, but lost. Now there’s a city library branch named after him.)
- Cassils, a Los Angeles performance artist (using just one name) who developed what the exhibit calls a “transmasculine physique” and punched and kicked a 2,000-pound block of clay into shape. It was cast in bronze and titled “Resilience of the 20 percent,” referring to the 20 percent increase in violence against transgender persons during the year of the performance. It’s on view with photos of the event.
- Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, one of the couples that in 1955 formed the Daughters of Bilitis, the nation’s first lesbian rights group. They were also the first same-sex couple married at San Francisco City Hall in 2004 and then, when it was completely legal, in 2008.
These “untold stories” have been told in other venues, such as San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society Museum. But a kaleidoscopic exploration like this, which proudly focuses on fringe elements, has never filled the galleries of a major museum.
“This is absolutely the right time for this exhibit,” museum director Lori Fogarty said as the show opened. LGBTQ and transgender rights and activists are in the news. Beyond current events, she said the exhibit “proposes a future where everyone will feel safe and included.”Rather than spotlighting the obvious, this exhibit instead settles into multiple rivulets of history and contemporary life. (There is also a small amount of material with explicit sexual content, clearly marked.)
Here is the prototype rainbow flag created by Gilbert Baker in 1978 with the original eight colors (pink and turquoise were later dropped). Here are large-scale photographs of buildings that once housed lesbian bars in San Francisco, Oakland, Hayward and Santa Clara. Here are photos from gay newspapers of Pride parades and political demonstrations in the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
All in all, it’s a serious documentation, with some amusing touches. Among the community groups founded over the decades, there are photos of the Blue Max motorcycle club in Southern California. Its members usually wore German-inspired spiked helmets. But for an Easter motorcycle run, they topped the helmets with inflatable bunnies.
There’s also a display about the campaign to create a “gay utopia” in Alpine County in far Northern California in the 1970s. It didn’t last, but the exhibit includes a letter to the organizers from guys named Tom, Doug and Mel in San Francisco: “We would like information concerning the settlement of Alpine County’s new breed of hearty outdoor homosexuals!”
Where does all this lead? The context is vague, but that question is partially answered via a wall-size timeline at the end of the exhibit. There are stories of a female stagecoach driver, of male impersonators at a nightclub in the 1930s, of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk’s assassination and of AIDS and the activist group ACT UP.
There is fresh art on display as well. Among the most striking are Grace Rosario Perkins’ acrylics, Julio Salgado’s “Give Me All Your….” color series, and Edie Fake’s intricate drawings including “Friends of Dorothy.”
Chris E. Vargas has created a kind of gallery-within-the-gallery, MOTHA, the “Museum of Trans Hirstory and Art.” That’s “hirstory,” not “history.” There are photos from the 1950s of Jose Sarria at San Francisco’s Black Cat bar and a blue sequin jacket worn by the singer Sylvester in the 1970s.
Curator Christina Linden said the exhibit was meant to cover what’s left out of mainstream histories, but “a lot is left out here as well.” If there’s anything missing from this more than half-century of LGBGQ culture, it may only be because the museum ran out of exhibit space.
Contact Robert Taylor at rtaylorsf@aol.com.
IF YOU GO
What: “Queer California: Untold Stories”
Through: Aug. 11; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. wwekends
Where: Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak streets.
Admission: $12 to $21 includes exhibit surcharge
Information: 510-318-8400, museumca.org.
