P M.
Yelp
It is fantastic that San Francisco is home to the country's first GLBT museum. It is a proud accomplishment for a group whose issues are often underrepresented in contemporary museums around the world. It is such a shame, however, that the content of this museum is rather embarrassingly awful and barely illuminating of any issue, let alone GLBT history.
The museum visibly bears the scars of design by committee. Rather than focus on the arch of GLBT history in this country or even this city, the museum is divided into small display cases that house themed vignettes and papers from the museum's collection. In politest language, these themes are esoteric: a display on a gay Japanese-American man who was interned sits next to a window about sexuality among lesbians of color. It is clear that the GLBT History Museum wanted to include every group possible, but in so doing, sacrificed any sense of narrative or continuity.
The few items in their collection that stand out are barely referenced, an embarrassing oversight. A pamphlet published from what looks like the mid-1970s with information about the legality of sodomy in different states is presented without commentary. What a fantastic opportunity to discuss the criminalization of gay sex that was only finally struck down in 2003. Instead, the museum puts this amazing relic next to any number of other detritus of fifty years of gay life in America. This shows that the editorial and curatorial control is so weak that very little actual history is presented.
The museum's collection is mostly papers from decades gone by. Please do not infer from this that the museum's curators have sought out unique and rare artefacts full of history and importance. Instead. some of the various displays include a whole wall of gay bar advertising from the 1970s; letters received by a gay lobbyist from the same epoch; two, sad looking lockers from what we are to presume is a former gay bathhouse (surely a proud moment in gay history if there ever was one!); a sad looking drag queen dress; and a festive shelf of dildos of all colors. There are also multiple photographs of a black woman in a suit who the viewer is left to assume played some role, somewhere, at sometime in GLBT History. If you can see a through line to any of these things beyond the fact that they are all gay, please do let me know, because I sure cannot.
In what is perhaps the museum's worst failing, the two pantsuits worn by the first gay couple to be legally wed in California are featured prominently in the museum's vestibule. There is a placard that explains the garments' provenance, which is presented without commentary. There is nary a word about the battle that those two women had to endure to be the first couple married in California; nor the ongoing fight for equality here in this state. In fact, the whole museum avoids discussing history for the sake of keepsakes, trinkets, and leftovers.
The entire museum feels like the leftover bin at a garage sale. The collection is so random as to confuse the issue of gay history. Someday there will be a great museum on GLBT History, hopefully in a place of pride on the Mall in Washington. Contrarily, this museum of history avoids history as though it were a dirty word. Shame.
