Queer California: Untold Stories
April 13–August 11, 2019
Explore untold narratives of California’s LGBTQ+ communities in OMCA’s powerful new exhibition Queer California: Untold Stories. Go beyond the mainstream with stories focusing on transgender communities, people of color, women, and others who have often been left out of this history. Queer California: Untold Stories will deepen and expand our understanding of this history through art, video, music, and more. Experience powerful examples of social activism through contemporary artwork and historical materials and view rarely-seen artifacts, archival documents, photographs, costumes, and ephemera such as zines, stickers, and flyers. The exhibition aligns important milestones in LGBTQ+ culture with lesser-known stories, focusing on a diversity of queer identities, civil rights, and resistance to oppression.
Share your own personal experiences and moments in a participatory gallery display that reflects the range of California’s queer history and the places that those outside of the norm may have found that they fit in. Queer California presents a future of possibility; through themes of memory, mourning, anger, desire, and hope, this exhibition draws on histories of struggle for self-determination to help us imagine a more inclusive future.
There is a $5 charge for this special exhibition in addition to regular Museum admission.
OMCA includes representations of queer bodies and material with sexual content in this exhibition in order to affirm the ways in which they have been central to the experience of LGBTQ+ individuals and communities.
In order to provide visitors a clear choice about viewing material with explicit sexual content, it is indicated like this:
Artworks in the exhibition were made by artists and collaborators including Absolute Empress III Shirley, Chloe Aftel, Laura Aguilar, Tina Valentin Aguirre, D-L Alvarez, Steven Arnold, Gilbert Baker, Lisa Ben, Andrea Bowers, Kaucyila Brooke, Ginger Brooks-Takahashi, Craig Calderwood, Pat Campano, Monica Canilao, Tammy Rae Carland, Cassils, Jerome Caja, Willy Chavarria, Kate Clark, Torreya Cummings, Amanda Curreri, Cyclona, Cecil Davis, Reed Erickson, Rhys Ernst, Edie Fake, Eve Fowler, William P. Gaddis Jr., Clay Geerdes, Rick Gerharter, James Gobel, Nicki Green, James Gruber, Barbara Hammer, Mick Hicks, William E. Jones, Lenn Keller, Joseph Richard Kapps, Young Joon Kwak, Vero Majano, DJ Brown Amy (Amy Martinez), Jaguar Mary, Helen Nestor, Yetunde Olagbaju, Kari Orvik, Frances Reid, Augie Robles, Peaches, Grace Rosario Perkins, Marlon Riggs, Nica Ross, Julio Salgado, Helen “Sanders” Sandoz, Jose Sarria, Patrick Staff, Chuck Stallard, Eric A. Stanley, A.L. Steiner, Elizabeth Stevens, Sylvester, Tina Takemoto, MCXT, Wu Tsang, Chris E. Vargas, Lex Vaughn, Travis Y., and Cathy Zheutlin. Additional participants include L. Frank, Joseph Byron Jones, Miss Major, Toshio Meronek, Deborah A. Miranda, Donovan Nation, Kenny Ray Ramos, Kanyon Sayers-Roods, Kayla Strickland, and Karen Vigneault.
Contributing archives include The American Philosophical Society; The Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco (AASF); Bay Area Lesbian Archives; California State Archives; The Collections of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University; The Digital Transgender Archive; The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society; Lambda Archives; The Lesbian Herstory Archives; ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries; San Francisco Public Library; James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center; The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center; and Willard Library.
Queer California: Untold Stories is supported in part by the Oakland Museum Women’s Board. Additional support is provided by Jen and Frances Rainin.
