Local
Home Movie Quilt on display at BMA
Crowd-sourced project seeks contributions from local LGBT people
Artists Jaimes Mayhew and Rahne Alexander (Photo by Jill Fannon)
Artists Rahne Alexander and Jaimes Mayhew are launching the Baltimore LGBTQI+ Home Movie Quilt this fall at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and they have opened a call to the community to participate.
As part of the artists’ year-long BMA exhibition titled “Queer Interiors,” they have created a hanging quilt. This quilt will serve as a projection screen for video and images sourced from Baltimore’s LGBTQI+ community, evoking a classic Baltimore Album Quilt.
From September 2016 through August 2017, the quilt will hang in the BMA, and become an unprecedented, ever-expanding domestic portrait of Baltimore’s expansive LGBTQI+ communities. The artists partnered with the LGBT Health Resource Center at Chase Brexton Health Care for this exhibit.
“The Baltimore LGBTQI+ Home Movie Quilt, sets out to be an unprecedented, crowd-sourced multimedia community portrait of these populations in Baltimore,” Alexander tells the Blade.
“We were interested in exploring the ways that queer people experience ordinary domestic life and providing a platform for us to both celebrate and investigate those quotidian circumstances. We are collecting images from the community that show the depth and breadth of our communities, which are often stitched together under one acronym, but are not often seen.”
The next deadline to submit images or video to the project is Oct. 9. The entire exhibition opens to the public and there will be an opening party and artist talk on Oct. 14, featuring drinks and snacks from Gertrude’s and dancing, with music by Baltimore hip-hop artist DDm.
For more information on the quilt, visit lgbtq-quilt.tumblr.com or email the artists at [email protected].
Photos
PHOTOS: Helen Hayes Awards
Gay Men’s Chorus, local drag artists have featured performance at ceremony
The 41st Helen Hayes Awards were held at The Anthem on Monday, May 19. Felicia Curry and Mike Millan served as the hosts.
A performance featuring members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington and local drag artists was held at the end of the first act of the program to celebrate WorldPride 2025.
The annual awards ceremony honors achievement in D.C.-area theater productions and is produced by Theatre Washington.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
District of Columbia
Laverne Cox, Reneé Rapp, Deacon Maccubbin named WorldPride grand marshals
Three LGBTQ icons to lead parade
WorldPride organizers announced Thursday that actress and trans activist Laverne Cox, powerhouse performer Reneé Rapp, and LGBTQ trailblazer Deacon Maccubbin will serve as grand marshals for this year’s WorldPride parade.
The Capital Pride Alliance, which is organizing WorldPride 2025 in Washington, D.C., revealed the honorees in a press release, noting that each has made a unique contribution to the fabric of the LGBTQ community.
Cox made history in 2014 as the first openly transgender person nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category for her role in Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black.” She went on to win a Daytime Emmy in 2015 for her documentary “Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word,” which followed seven young trans people as they navigated coming out.
Rapp, a singer and actress who identifies as a lesbian, rose to prominence as Regina George in the Broadway musical “Mean Girls.” She reprised the role in the 2024 film adaptation and also stars in Max’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” portraying a character coming to terms with her sexuality. Rapp has released an EP, “Everything to Everyone,” and an album, “Snow Angel.” She announced her sophomore album, “Bite Me,” on May 21 and is slated to perform at the WorldPride Music Festival at the RFK Festival Grounds.
Deacon Maccubbin, widely regarded as a cornerstone of Washington’s LGBTQ+ history, helped organize D.C.’s first Gay Pride Party in 1975. The event took place outside Lambda Rising, one of the first LGBTQ bookstores in the nation, which Maccubbin founded. For his decades of advocacy and activism, he is often referred to as “the patriarch of D.C. Pride.”
“I am so honored to serve as one of the grand marshals for WorldPride this year. This has been one of the most difficult times in recent history for queer and trans people globally,” Cox said. “But in the face of all the rhetorical, legislative and physical attacks, we continue to have the courage to embrace who we truly are, to celebrate our beauty, resilience and bravery as a community. We refuse to allow fear to keep us from ourselves and each other. We remain out loud and proud.”
“Pride is everything. It is protection, it is visibility, it is intersectional. But most importantly, it is a celebration of existence and protest,” Rapp said.
The three will march down 14th Street for the WorldPride Parade in Washington on June 7.
2025 D.C. Trans Pride was held at Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library on Saturday, May 17. The day was filled with panel discussions, art, social events, speakers, a resource fair and the Engendered Spirit Awards. Awardees included Lyra McMillan, Pip Baitinger, Steph Niaupari and Hayden Gise. The keynote address was delivered by athlete and advocate Schuyler Bailar.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
PHOTOS: Helen Hayes Awards
Laverne Cox, Reneé Rapp, Deacon Maccubbin named WorldPride grand marshals
House passes reconciliation with gender-affirming care funding ban
PHOTOS: D.C. Trans Pride
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
Looking back at 50 years of Pride in D.C
WorldPride events round-up
Pope Leo XIV: Family based on ‘stable union between a man and a woman’
Wes Moore signs HIV decriminalization bill
