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Michael Tilson Thomas Q&A
The out conductor on his long career in classical music
Michael Tilson Thomas says the public ultimately decides what works are retained in the classical canon.
Washington Performing Arts presents the San Francisco Symphony
Kennedy Center Concert Hall
Saturday, April 16
4 p.m.
$55
Though just four performances, the San Francisco Symphony’s current East Coast mini-tour features two programs.
The symphony will perform on Saturday, April 16 at 4 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall performing Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished” and Gustav Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde.” The players will be joined by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and tenor Simon O’Neill. Two days prior, they’ll perform the same program at Carnegie Hall. The symphony will explore works by Copland and Schumann at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center this weekend.
We caught up with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, now in his 21st season with the symphony with whom he’s shared 12 Grammys, by phone this week. His comments have been slightly edited for length.
Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony, says managing an orchestra like a business is a mistake. (Photo by Bill Swerbenski; courtesy San Francisco Symphony)
WASHINGTON BLADE: You’ve recorded many Mahler symphonies. What is it about his music that continues to resonate with you?
MICHAEL TILSON-THOMAS: His music is very central to my whole view of life and that was evident from the first time I heard his music when I was around 13. This piece in fact, which we’re about to play in Washington, “Das Lied von der Erde,” I heard the last movement, the farewell, called “Der Abschied,” and it was stunning, a shock to me to hear music which so completely described the shape of my own soul and what I felt to be my parents’ souls, where all the kind of aching questions about the meaning of life and all sorts of questions which I hadn’t even consciously formed, but somehow I just knew this was a testimony that meant so much to me. Part of that was the musical presentation of situations where there can be bitterness or frustration or conflict, but nonetheless there’s still an element of beauteousness as well. For me, the message of the music is to hold on to the beauteousness at whatever the cost. That resonated with me from the first moment and still does.
BLADE: Does the Schubert symphony you’re also performing contrast with or complement the Mahler?
TILSON-THOMAS: Schubert (was) … using this sort of haunted language that was very Czech-influenced because his parents came from what is now the Czech Republic and of course Mahler did as well, so there is this sort of major/minor haunted harmonic language that’s part of it. … On the piano you have a note which you sometimes call E flat or sometimes you call it D sharp. On the piano, it’s the same note, but in orchestral music, these two notes are actually different notes. They do different things and they lead in different directions. Schubert and Mahler are both constantly reinterpreting the meaning of a note. … You’re being kind of guided, pulled back and forth across the line of the meaning of a single note taking you into a brighter or darker world. That’s very much what they’re playing with.
BLADE: As you perform around the country and the world, do you sense differences in how the audiences receive the work?
TILSON-THOMAS: I think we’re very aware of the different audiences. They’re ectoplasmic almost. You come off the stage and you can just sense a certain energy and focus in the hall and that does affect the way you feel about the music. I’m fond of saying these big places for me are like national parks that you return to. You’ve wandered there before, but the company with which you find yourself is different and has an enormous influence on what the nature of the experience is going to be.
BLADE: Have you been insulated to some degree in San Francisco from the kinds of challenges many of our other national symphonies are facing?
TILSON-THOMAS: No, I wouldn’t say so. Like all the major orchestras, we’ve experienced different kinds of crises and growing pains, visions coalescing as different generations have moved through the orchestra. … These things are inevitable. I’ve been performing symphonic music now for 50 years. I started when I was 20, so I’ve seen many changes happen in music and society and music coming from China and Venezuela and parts of the world from which we didn’t used to see so many people. The growth of all these things is a very positive thing in the big picture. So there’s a very positive growth state and at the same time, there are definitely growing pains in society itself. How are these things going to be sustained and grown and what do young musicians coming into the profession desire? What kind of life do they want to have? All these things are being turned over and discussed even as we speak.
BLADE: Are you pressured to perform film scores or saw away under pop acts or that sort of thing to bring in new people? Or have you tried to stave off that sort of thing?
TILSON-THOMAS: There’s a balance that needs to be struck and there’s always going to be a concern of having too many programs that would be apart from the central mission of the orchestra. Not just in symphony orchestras but with any arts organization. There’s a lot of talk about searching for sustainable business models … but these are not businesses. These are idealistic organizations that are communities of people that were established to share a particular art as a living tradition and strengthening and preserving that and passing it on to many generations. That’s the real purpose. It’s necessary perhaps in each new generation to remind ourselves that’s what we’re doing and what we need to do.
BLADE: Your bio makes reference to your work “reimagining the concert experience.” In what ways have you done that?
TILSON-THOMAS: I’ve been very involved with multi-media, new technology and something of a pioneer in using the online resource Internet2 to reach people with educational messages in territories around the world. … Most recently with a process called LOLA, an information system that reduces online latencies and makes it possible now within a thousand kilometers to perform music with someone as if you’re really in the same room with them. … With the New World Symphony, we’ve done a lot of work in video that has been ahead of the curve. Not just concert performance videos … but creating kind of art installations inside the concert hall.
BLADE: Have you always been out professionally?
TILSON-THOMAS: Oh, I don’t know. That’s hard to answer. Joshua (Robison) and I got married a couple years ago but we’ve been together 40 years. Since the very beginning, we were together very clearly with no disguise and that goes back quite a ways at this point. To us, that didn’t seem so remarkable. We worked together in a production company that makes a lot of different musical products and education projects happen around the world and we’ve always done that. We haven’t been involved, as many others have been, in any courageous crusade of one type or another. We supported those things and I have such respect for people who did that. On the other hand, people now say it was somewhat extraordinary that we were living our lives that way in terms of being transparent about being together then and that was unusual, I guess, at the time.
BLADE: How gay are our orchestras in general?
TILSON-THOMAS: I’d say a very rough number would be maybe 10 percent or something like that. Maybe more.
BLADE: Perhaps more in San Francisco?
TILSON-THOMAS: Not necessarily. Orchestras are very individual animals. It was, of course, different when I first began conducting. In any major orchestra there might have been one or two people who were not even out but everybody just kind of knew they were gay. As opposed to now when there are many people in all the major orchestras who are LGBT and it’s not in any way a big deal and certainly not with the many young musicians. If people are thinking they might make music with someone, what’s going on with their gender or sexuality is of no interest whatsoever. If you’re talking about where you’re placing the third of a major chord or issues of tuning or articulation, then that’s a big deal.
BLADE: It’s interesting when you see the kinds of people given the Kennedy Center Honors over time and how popular acts are now being inducted much more often than performers from the classical arts. At the same time, there’s a lot of hand wringing in our symphonies and opera companies and so on. I could give tons of examples. Is society being slowly dumbed down over time?
TILSON-THOMAS: Well there are different kinds of occasions that serve different purposes. There are lots of awards and prizes that are given for certain types of work, like the MacArthur Fellows or the Pulitzer Prizes or the great number of other awards and prizes that are given to people whose names would be little known to the general public, but which nonetheless exert quite an influence within various arts worlds. … Some of these things are much more of an occasion in certain realms than something like the Grammys or the Oscars or those kinds of things which are really more shows. It used to be that if you were from the classical arts and you were up for a Grammy, you would go to the Grammys and you were presented with it there. That no longer happens. Something might happen in a hotel lobby earlier in the day or something because those awards are not in the mainstream.
BLADE: They only give out about six on the air anymore out of 90-some categories or whatever it is.
TILSON-THOMAS: Yeah, well, I guess in any art there will always be different sides. You have people doing quite specific work which they know from the beginning will appeal to a small number of people. Other people are working in much wider areas but it’s extraordinary at this particular moment, the diversity of work that is taking place. It’s really quite remarkable the very interesting experimentations with styles that a lot of people are doing. A lot of people are writing and thinking new thoughts, way more than you would think based on the gloomy predictions that are often made about the future of all of this. It’s not quite the way it looks from the outside when you see all the young people out there creating new work.
BLADE: Would you say the works of Mahler and Schubert don’t carry quite the cultural gravitas they might have a generation ago perhaps?
TILSON-THOMAS: I saw something in San Francisco the other night and one of the pieces on the program was written in 1199. It was the earliest and the most recent piece was written in 1963. So it’s extraordinary how much has changed in that period of 7- or 800 years. There were certain things about that piece from 1199 that were very reminiscent of works by Steve Reich or John Adams and that are still very influential in contemporary musical thought. A composer like Schubert or Mahler, the reaction to whom at the time was often hostility or incomprehension, over time it has been proven that there was something in that music that people wanted to come back to. Ideas that proved to be so powerful, so moving and so authentic that people wanted to hear them again and again and it’s fascinating because it’s the audience that makes that decision. I can be a big fan of some particular composer and can champion that composer through many times and create situations in which their music will be presented, but ultimately 10 or 15 or 20 years later, it will be the public that decides if that music means enough that they want to hear it again.
BLADE: Has audience etiquette improved or deteriorated to any noticeable degree over the course of your career?
TILSON-THOMAS: It’s very different in different places and even on different evenings. These things are very different from city to city and country to country. Even in San Francisco, there’s a certain sense of what the character of the audience is like. The Wednesday night audience, the Thursday night audience, they’re all slightly different in their reactions and in their focus. We created a new series called SoundBox which is designed for people who’ve never been to classical music concerts before with very experimental repertoire and it uses video projection and other things and is kind of set in a club atmosphere. Drinks are served and you have 20 minutes of music then 20 minutes of lounge-type activity and then the music comes back. Well, in fact these audiences are more quiet and focused than the subscription audience can be. They’re totally focused. When the music starts, they’re totally in it. What for me has been particularly gratifying is that with some of this earlier music we’ve been doing, we did one piece by Monteverdi from 1610, so many young people came up and said how transporting it was and you think, “God, here’s something from 400 years ago that can reach out and have that kind of emotional effect.” That really is one of the greatest treasures of my life.
Michael Tilson Thomas (Photo by Spencer Lowell; courtesy San Francisco Symphony)
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Television loses a legend, longtime ‘Will & Grace’ director James Burrows
Iconic hitmaker leaves behind a legacy of telling LGBTQ stories
You don’t have to be a pretentious film major to name 10 movie directors. But naming television directors is not that simple. They’re the unsung heroes of your favorite shows, and the late James Burrows was the television director. He passed on June 19, but his DNA runs through television history.
He directed over 1200 episodes of television and over 50 pilots. He co-created “Cheers” and directed many episodes of long-running series like “Friends,” “Taxi,” “Frasier,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and “Two and a Half Men.” You also may remember him from playing a heightened version of himself on the Lisa Kudrow comedy “The Comeback.”
He has left an indelible mark on the LGBTQ community. As recently as last year, he directed the series run of “Mid-Century Modern” starring Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Linda Lavin. He was also a longtime director of “Will & Grace” and directed every episode of the series revival. He even directed the unaired “Absolutely Fabulous” pilot with Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Johnston, and Zosia Mamet.
Not to mention he’s worked with queer icons throughout history, including Betty White and Stockard Channing on their single-season series, and Jennifer Coolidge in “2 Broke Girls.”
He started his career on shows like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda,” “Laverne & Shirley,” and the first four seasons of “Taxi.”
He continued to work steadily and directed successful pilots that went to series for “Roc,” “3rd Rock From the Sun,” “Dharma & Greg,” and “Wings.” He directed multiple episodes of “Friends,” “Caroline in the City,” and “Frasier.”
This magic continued into the 2000s with him directing the pilots for “Two and a Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and multiple episodes of “Mike & Molly,” and the entire return series of “Will & Grace.”
What was the secret to his success? He’d enact the “fun clause” in his contract. In his words, “Life is too short to deal with obnoxious leads,” he shared. “So as long as the writing is good and the cast is fun, I’m going to enjoy the experience.”
He had the magic touch, having multiple pilots turned into long-running series. He was nominated for an Emmy 24 times in 26 years and worked consistently until a year before his death.
The secret was the way he brought the cast together. He describes, “it was my job to mold them into an ensemble, and they did round into a group of people who loved each other.”
This earned him 11 Emmy Awards and five Directors Guild of America Awards, including being awarded the inaugural DGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Television Direction.
In a 2003 interview by the Television Academy, he was asked how he wants to be remembered, and he said, “That every night forever you can tune in somewhere, and there’ll be a show I did.”
He’s survived by his wife, Debbie, four daughters, seven grandchildren, and the countless people whose careers he launched and the countless viewers he inspired with his television legacy.
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D.C. prepares to party as Pride celebrations kick off Saturday
Bars, clubs have busy lineups; Pride on the Pier returns
Capital Pride’s date change isn’t slowing down the festivities. Back in December, the Capital Pride Alliance shifted the calendar for Pride celebrations in the nation’s capital from the second weekend of June to two weeks later to the weekend of June 20-21 to not conflict with President Trump’s birthday and 250th anniversary of America celebrations, with the aim that “our community can gather safely and without unnecessary barriers… We are protecting our space and preserving Pride as a powerful act of visibility, solidarity, and resistance.”
On the heels of WorldPride last year, the city shows no sign of slowing down. Instead, restaurants, bars, clubs, and neighborhoods are taking the opportunity to be even more visible. The Blade has put together a (non-comprehensive) list of parties, activations, and activities across town:
Pride on the Pier returns on Saturday, June 13 to the Wharf on the Southwest waterfront. The event, sponsored and hosted by the Washington Blade, is free and runs from 4-9 p.m. There will be vendors, DJs, and drag performances all day. VIP tickets are $25 and come with air conditioned party room, private bathrooms, and free cocktail. More details at prideonthepierdc.com.
Capital Pride Official Opening Party: RIOT! is the official opening dance party of Capital Pride, taking place Friday June 19, 9 PM-3AM. The 2026 edition headlining performer is Myki Meeks, a finalist of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” season 18; Bob The Drag Queen will perform a special set. DMV-area DJs and performers include: Bambi, Baphomette, Bumper, Cake Pop!, Connor, DJ Ed Bailey, DJ Diyanna Monet, Evry Pleasure, Jakknife Complex, Mari Con Carne, Pussy Noir, WessTheDJ. Trade owner Ed Bailey is producing the event.
Kinetic Presents brings the heat across the entirety of Pride weekend as well. It again is partnering with Capital Pride Alliance to produce four events over four days this Pride, including the Official Main Event on Saturday (the Friday official event is at Echostage). Kinetic’s parties are splayed across various D.C. venues, with special performances, massive productions, shirtless dancers, play zones, dance-forward audio and visuals, and international DJ talent. Thursday, June 18 at 10 PM at District Eagle is Lust, with music by Dan Slater and TOMI. Friday, June 19 at 10 PM is UNCUT XXL Heavy Load, at A.i. Warehouse in Union Market District, with music by Alex Acosta, Felipe Lira & Mitch Ferrino; the party is a “high-octane night of muscular house and tribal rhythms.” Saturday, June 20 at 10 PM brings that official main event, Kinetic Toy Land, at Echostage, with music by GSP & Matt Suave. Alaska Thunderfuck headlines. Sunday evening June 21 at 10 PM closes with discoVERS at SAX. A portion of tickets supports the DC LGBTQ+ community through Capital Pride Alliance.
9:30 Club always comes in clutch for the LGBTQ community. Already in June, it produced Kitty Kat Ball on June 7, and Kiesza performed on June 8. On June 20 at 10 PM, the famed Mixtape party hits the stage, care of gay DJs Shea van Horn and Matt Bailer, who have spun together for coming up on two decades. Mixtape has been held at several venues across the city over those years, and now settled on 9:30 Club for Pride. On June 25 at 7 PM, Big Freedia – the bounce artist from New Orleans – hits the 9:30 Club scene for the eighth time, as part of the Big Freedom Tour.
Crush: New this year from the 14th Street bar is the Pride Pop-Up, sitting pretty in the parking lot at 1820 14th St., N.W., at the corner of Swann Street by the start of the Pride Parade route. Hours are Friday from 2-10 PM and Saturday from 12-10 PM. Friday evening features Grizzly Bear Happy Hour, a DJ will set up shop on Saturday, and for those needing another layer, there’s a Crush merch store. Co-owner Mark Rutstein “has always wanted to throw a party in that parking lot, so he did,” said co-owner Stephen Rutgers. Note that Crush (the bar) will have a cover on Friday and Saturday.
Kiki: Over at Kiki, there’s a full slate of Pride-themed programming all week. Tuesday, June 16 at 9 PM brings karaoke; Wednesday, June 17 at 7:30 PM is trivia; Thursday June 18 at 9PM is “Night of 1000 Tatianna’s Drag Show”, and Friday June 19 at 9 PM brings the Juneteenth Serve Drag Show. Saturday, June 20 at 10 PM, post-parade, is a Pride Dance Party with DJ Lemz. Sunday daytime at 5 PM is the Father Figures Daddy Issues Special Drag Show; and after the festival at 8 PM, DJ Tezrah hits the tapes.
Jane Jane: Right along the parade route, gay-owned Jane Jane has transformed its space into a “No Kings, Yas Queens” activation in a direct response to the America 250th commemorations happening downtown, from the colorful window installation, to merch (including a custom bandana and tank) to disco wig installations. Events include industry night on Mondays, donations to LGBTQ charities, and to-go cocktails during the Pride Parade.
Shaw’s Tavern: Gay-owned Shaw’s Tavern on Florida Avenue celebrates Pride week with a full lineup of themed events, entertainment, and specials, including Pride trivia on Monday, June 15 at 7:30 PM, bingo on Tuesday, June 16 at 8 PM, a cabaret on Thursday, June 18 at 9 PM, Juneteenth Drag Brunch on Friday, June 19 at 12:30 PM, and both a pre-parade brunch (10 AM-4 PM) and post-parade party (5-9 PM) on Saturday, June 20. Sunday, June 21 at 7 PM brings Mama’s Sunday Supper & Drag Pride Show in the evening for anyone who is still awake.
Trade: This classic has a weekend of events, starting on Thursday, with Tiburon Pride Edition, a Latin Dance party in the Shark Tank. On Friday, the bar opens early (at 2 PM), with all-day happy hour and the Jx&Evry Show. On Saturday, the bar opens at noon, offering a prime parade viewing spot from its windows. There will be the CLASH drag show hosted by Tatianna and Crimsyn, and Sweet Spot party that night. On Sunday, the bar opens for normal hours at 2 PM, with DJs Adam K, Alex Love, and WESSTHEDJ.
Pitchers: The multi-level bar in Adams Morgan is hosting a Pride-themed show on Thursday, June 18 at 10 PM, with drawstring bag giveaways – the only kind of bag that will be allowed into the bar during Pride weekend. The show features drag queen Kyle Sonique Love.
Barrel House Cafe and Bar: Also by the parade route on 14th Street, Barrel House Cafe takes advantage of its large patio to have a slate of events during Pride week, including Schism, a drag and burlesque show on June 18 at 10 PM, as well as an all-day Pride party coinciding on parade day.
Bunker: Bunker again plays host to a series of afters. Friday night (Saturday 3:30 AM) is Unhinged, and Saturday night (Sunday 3:30AM) is Unholy. The regular Saturday night party (10 PM) brings in Venetian and Tiara Missou. All parties have cover charges.
District Eagle: Beyond the Kinetic party on Friday, June 19 brings Gear Night at 10 PM; Saturday, June 20 at 10 PM is LOBO presents PRISM, and Sunday, June 21 is Sundaze wit Papi at 6 PM.
African Art Museum: On Thursday, June 18 at 5 PM, this Smithsonian museum is hosting a free event with artists and curators celebrating its exhibit, “Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art,” “based on years of close collaboration and dialogue with African visual art practitioners who claim belonging in the LGBTQ+ community, however they define those terms,” according to the museum.
KNEAD Hospitality & Design: The gay-owned KNEAD restaurant group (including spots like Gatsby, Mi Vida, Succotash The Grill) is featuring the GLITTERATI cocktail, made with Tito’s, St-Germain Elderflower, Butterfly Flower, ginger, and yes, glitter. A portion of proceeds from every Glitterati cocktail sold will benefit The Trevor Project. The cocktail will be sold throughout June.
The Fountain Inn is partnering with Rhodium spirits (Rhode Island’s first LGBTQ+ owned distillery) all month, making cocktails like gimlets and espresso martinis featuring Rhodium’s liquors. Proceeds benefit SMYAL, an organization dedicated to empowering LGBTQ+ youth.
Hard Rock Cafe: Hard Rock DC is taking part in the chain’s annual “LOVE OUT LOUD” campaign, with Pride merch, specials on June 20, and a donation to The Trevor Project.
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Fighting ‘Rainbow Panic’ in museums
Here’s how we can resist the escalation of anti-LGBTQ censorship
Back in February of 2025, I wrote a piece for New York City-based arts publication Hyperallergic about the importance of museums stepping up for their LGBTQ staff. I was right to be concerned. Over the last three years, censorship of LGBTQ histories and art has exploded in the museum field. Discourse surrounding censorship of art and artifacts reflects galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) institutions’ push to erase LGBTQ stories, language, and people from not just exhibitions but also the wider museum field.
Many now recognize this rush of censorship in the early 2020s as the “rainbow panic,” first coined by historian Wendy Rouse in her piece published in July 2025.
While LGBTQ censorship in GLAM institutions is not new, the recent push to censor queer and trans histories under the Trump administration began in May 2024 when members of the City Council of Lubbock, Texas cut funding for the First Friday Art Trial due to the inclusion of a drag performance.
Additional cancellations followed, including in February 2025, when the Art Museum of the Americas canceled “Nature’s Wild With Andil Gosine” scheduled to open in March. While the museum did not say why, some of Gosine’s work that was set to be part of the exhibition reflected on LGBTQ identity and activism in the Caribbean.
That same month, the National Park Service removed mentions of transgender people from the Stonewall National Memorial website, now seen as a watershed moment in queer erasure. In response, the LGBTQ+ History Association issued a statement warning about the recent moves to censor and erase LGBTQ history and art.
The Association was right to be concerned because the following month, Trump released his Executive Order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” where he targeted the National Museum of American History, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the American Women’s History Museum.
But it wasn’t just erasure, it was also intentional renaming. Also in February 2025, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art changed its traveling exhibition of work by women, queer and trans artists, changing the title that was originally “transfeminisms.” By June, the Art Institute of Chicago changed the title of an exhibition of Gustave Caillebotte’s work and removed discussions of gender and sexuality from the wall text that were included when the show was displayed in Paris and Los Angeles.
In the last year, censorship has especially escalated with Amy Sherald cancelling her show “American Sublime” at the National Portrait Gallery (and moving it to the Baltimore Museum of Art) and art scholar Ignacio Darnaude writing in an Out op-ed that the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) exhibition “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return” did not include information about the artist’s queer identity or the work’s connections to AIDS. The National Portrait Gallery has denied claims of erasure.
This leads us to the most recent happening when in February 2026, a Pride flag was removed from the Stonewall National Monument after a directive from the Trump administration. Thankfully, later that month, protesters re-raised the flag. In April 2026, the National Park Service agreed to restore the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Memorial and keep it up permanently. But even with this victory — the result of queer and trans organizing — attacks on LGBTQ histories remain.
As the histories we fought to collect and interpret are censored and erased, through museums’ compliance-in-advance as well as government discrimination and decree, we (I write as a queer GLAM worker) see a willingness to sacrifice those histories and our communities for institutional safety, funding, and government support.
Please know the LGBTQ community will remember the hard truths we learned this past year — that we and our histories were expendable. If we can be cast aside, hidden, or disowned, whose histories are safe? How can (and can we) rebuild trust in the institutions that failed us this past year? It’s not just the LGBTQ community. In fact, just this January, the National Park Service removed signage from the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia that referenced slavery at the President’s House Site.
Please help us to fight the erasure of queer and trans histories and communities. Please stand with the LGBTQ community (and LGBTQ+ GLAM workers) against the violence we are facing — not just outside museums, but inside them too.
For ways that you can help to fight historical erasure, including against the LGBTQ community, please consider the following:
Consume queer history content. Whether it be by visiting exhibitions, listening to a podcast, going on a walking tour or lecture, or buying queer history books, your presence and money speak volumes. And learn your local queer histories. Often, we focus on the large-scale histories that surround the Stonewall Uprising, Compton Cafeteria Riots, and other pivotal moments, but there’s queer history all around us. It’s time to learn and celebrate these histories.
On that topic, volunteer and contribute your time to local LGBTQ history initiatives. Everyone is based in different parts of the country, so another great option for access are online projects like The Pink Triangle Legacies Project, Queer Zine Archive Project, Queer Digital History Project, and Invisible Histories. Everyone has skills, especially GLAM workers, to support the work of these independent history groups.
Financially support and visit grassroots LGBTQ+ archives and museums. Despite mass censorship and violence over the past year, queer and trans history workers have created and facilitated groundbreaking exhibitions and community action at the Museum of Transology (specifically the TRANSCESTRY exhibition), the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art, and other grassroots archives, libraries, and museums created by and for our communities.
Queer and trans museum workers refuse to be silenced and shut out of institutions that have long ignored our histories. The work that we do to seek representation is too important, too urgent, to abandon. We look to these grassroots efforts as models for how our institutions can preserve and tell queer and trans histories because many of them were founded themselves during times of censorship and violence.
Find and support your local LGBTQ (and other) employee resource groups and other organizations pushing for transparency and accountability at your workplaces. Right now, many of these groups have gone underground. Where you can, provide mutual aid and financial and organizational support to these groups, and you can be an advocate (especially if you have privilege and protection) for these organizations and their efforts.
Support the unionization of GLAM workers — show up for pickets and use your attendance and money to support institutions that support and invest in their LGBTQ cultural workers. This past year has been incredibly difficult for LGBTQ museum workers — from censorship and erasure of our histories to the firing of and discrimination against LGBTQ federal workers, federal agencies have denied our existence, cut off lifesaving care for LGBTQ people, and ordered the termination of employee community resource groups.
Mobilize and fight against anti-LGBTQ legislation affecting your queer and trans GLAM colleagues (and your neighbors). As goes LGBTQ histories and representation, so goes rights for queer and trans museum staff. The best examples of this are the experiences of queer and trans federal and trust workers. Call your representatives, participate in resistance efforts, and contribute to mutual aid supporting people most hurt by the legislation.
Hope is not lost! LGBTQ history, as I can attest, is not going anywhere, but amid the rising tide of censorship and erasure, there has never been a more important time to show up in support of LGBTQ preservation, curation, and education efforts. As the victory surrounding the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument represents, these are hard-fought battles but ones that we can win with your support.
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