Stories that Center Queer California, and What Still Gets Left Out

ABSTRACT

The 2019 exhibition Queer California: Untold Stories at the Oakland Museum of California represented a constellation of queer hxtories and artistic perspectives that extended beyond the narratives that have been most frequently recounted in relation to LGBTQ+ individuals and communities in California. In alignment with OMCA's mission, a stated goal for the exhibition was to inspire a future of possibility for the exhibition's visitors, and to invite them to share both their own stories from the past and their own visions for the future – in conversation with one another and the institution.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer
• history
• archive
• co-creation
• interdisciplinary

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

About the author

Christina Linden is Associate Professor of the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts. She served as Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Oakland Museum of California from 2013 to 2017. As a curator and as an educator she strives to support social relevancy and create platforms for underrepresented voices. She is currently working on the book Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects in collaboration with artist Chris E. Vargas. Linden holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from Bard College and a BA in Art History from New York University.

Notes

1 The choice to use the term hxstory rather than History denotes a resistance to patriarchal form (i.e. the “his” in his story) and an embrace and reclaiming of non-hegemonic (or untold) narratives.

2 Refers to Audience segmentation and title testing data summarized in the “LGBTQ+ Exhibition Title Testing Report” compiled on 5/31/2018by OMCA Associate Director of Evaluation and Visitor Insights Johanna Jones.

3 Weeks before the opening, the experience developer also revisited these discussions in one-on-one, in-depth meetings with key staff in Visitor Services, Learning Initiatives, the Docent Center, Public Programs, Marketing, and Publicity and Communications to be sure that all of these areas were in general alignment and that frontline staff, in particular, felt prepared to answer questions if visitors did find some material to be explicit.

4 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 1.

5 “Queer California: Untold Stories Design Development II Phase Interpretive Plan,” internal institutional document created by experience developer Lisa Silberstein and curator Christina Linden for the Oakland Museum of California, 2019.

6 Average daily attendance fell at 660 visitors per day during the run of the exhibition, and while this was less than for some other recent special exhibitions, including All Power to the People, it still put the show in the top three for per capita admissions in recent years. Visitor exit survey results, however, showed that visitors were more likely than usual to state that they felt “welcome and at ease” in the exhibition, less likely to rate that their “experiences and identity are not reflected” in the exhibition, more likely to rate that “I felt comfortable expressing my ideas” in the exhibition, and also more likely to rate that “I value hearing ideas that are different from mine.” Both visitors with personal connections to the content and those without stated that they felt emotionally moved by the exhibition. In total, these outcomes seem to indicate that for the visitors who did decide to attend the exhibition, the experience resonated for both queer visitors and for broader audiences. Reflecting on evaluation data and on visitor feedback, many staff including those on the executive team expressed pride and enthusiasm about the project at its conclusion.

7 Special thanks to Susan Stryker, Alexandra Stern, Kate O’Connor, Nicole Novak, Toni Ann Trevino for making this possible. For more information, see the website for the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab at the University of Michigan: https://sites.google.com/umich.edu/ssj-mini-conference/sterilization-social-justice-lab

8 This response was reflected on the log of “In Gallery Visitor Comments” maintained by Gallery Guides conversing with visitors and in observation within the gallery and interviews with a random sample of fifty-six visitors exiting the exhibition, conducted by evaluation staff. A number of teachers, researchers and historians requested to have the included data sent to them. The Museum was able to produce a large PDF to share will those visitors. The amount of data included and the method used for designing the whole-wall graphic treatment that presented it in the exhibition did not translate to a format that could be placed online without a great deal of additional work, and the institutional budget and capacity wasn't able to support that effort. Perhaps this is an effort that would be worth revisiting during the time the Museum's building is closed to the public and initiatives have all moved online.

9 White, “The Untold Queer History of California”.

10 Dedicated archivists maintain important collections, in which much of the research for this exhibition was conducted and from which many of the materials were lent, at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco, the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San Francisco Public Library, the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries in Los Angeles, and the Lambda Archives in San Diego. Despite continuing concerted efforts to diversify these collections, though, they still remain predominently representative of white, cis, gay male histories. Materials related to the histories of Asian-American, Black-identified, indigenous, trans and gendernonconforming, bisexual, and lesbian communities are much harder to find in these archives, and accordingly were harder to represent in the Queer California exhibition. Deeper research and community outreach led to additional loans from private collections and from more specific archives – always with less funding, less staffing, and less accessible finding aids – such as the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York, and the Collections of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. Finding specific materials relevant to the exhibition in collections with purviews not specific to LGBTQ+ history, such as art museum collections, the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab at the University of Michigan, the Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco (AASF) or the California State Archives required extended and persistent research and sometimes convoluted correspondence which, in a few cases, precluded the ability to secure loans in time for the exhibition despite ample lead time and a significant research budget.

11 Evaluation data reflected that visitors to Queer California were both more likely, in relation to data collected for other recent special exhibitions, to be self-identified as trans or non-binary but also more likely to be white as related to visitorship, for instance, to All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50.

12 See, for instance, Khokha, “A History of Queer California”.

13 Miranda, “Extermination of The Joyas: Gendercide in Spanish California”, 253–84.

14 For instance, the exhibition included an excerpt from the diary of Father Fray Pedro Font, Apostolic Missionary of the College of Santa Cruz de Querataro, in reference to the San Francisco colony as he saw it on the Anza expedition in 1776, included in a number of sources including Heizer and Whipple, The California Indians, and reproductions from the Baptismal Register for Mission San Jose, September 2, 1797–November 17, 1830, in particular in reference to the use of the words joya and amujerado in the entry #3681 for Yonequichs, baptized as “Luis Antonio” at Mission San Jose on January 10, 1818 at age 22, buried in 1824 and entry #4733 for Yautaya, baptized as “Robustiano” at Mission San Jose on December 17, 1823 at age 32, buried in 1832, photographed at and courtesy of the Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco (AASF) and located via the The Early California Population Project (ECPP), a database of baptism, marriage, and burial records from California Missions, accessed at https://www.huntington.org/ecpp

15 Additional participants included Joseph Byron, Donovan, Kenny Ramos, Kanyon Sayers-Roods, Kayla Strickland, and Karen Vigneault, and the film was recorded on the unceded lands of the Coast Miwok, Kumeyaay, Mutsun Ohlone, and Southern Pomo peoples and of the Monacan Nation. Repeated visitor requests for external access resulted in the museum making the film available for online viewing: film can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=929861644103223. In the summer of 2020, an online public screening of the film along with a newly recorded introduction by Kumeyaay activist Kenny Ramos extended the reach of the film again, and recontextualized its meaning amidst both the pandemic and the important racial justice uprisings taking place at the time.

16 Lord and Meyer, Art and Queer Culture, 38.