LGBT@NYPL

The LGBT Committee has a new channel on iTunes where you can enjoy the Library's programs from your home or iPod. The new channel gives you access to the wide range of LGBT programming at the Library---from intimate discussions with major LGBT writers like Edmund White to oral histories of ACT-UP alumn Ann Northrop to LGBT teen outreach. You can also access LGBT Committee events, like the Committee's launch event this spring. Look forward to more online programs and video tours as we expand our LGBT online content this fall.

Illustration by Ivan Velez, Jr.

This year's Anti-Prom, held on June 5th, was a tremendous success. Over 200 teens rocked the Library's Astor Hall to the sounds of DJ Johnny Dynell who played everything from the saucy Reggaeton standard "Gasolina" to hardcore punk. Chi Chi Valenti and the Jackie Factory provided dancers costumed like characters from Japanese manga and  anime---space-age samurai and geisha---in line with this year's theme: The CosProm. The guest of honor this year was Simon Doonan who gave uplifting fashion advice to the crowd from his new book Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You.  The event received beautiful coverage by Brett Berk, author 

Recently released on the Library's Digital Gallery are photographs by Diana Davies. Davies' photographs provide a unique, close-up view into LGBT activism in the late 60s and early 70s, with a sharp focus on lesbian activism. Her photographs cover a wide range of LGBT history, including early protests by the Gay Liberation Front, dances at the Gay Activists Alliance's Firehouse, and iconic portraits of author/activists like Barbara Deming and Jill Johnston. Davies' photojournalism was published in The New York Times, Life, Time, and The Village Voice, among many other publications. Pictured above is author (and LGBT Committee Honorary Co-Chair) Rita 

Zoe Leonard. "Two Pairs" from Analogue, 1998-2007

The current photography show at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City, features---among others---the work of two major contemporary LGBT artists: Zoe Leonard and Glenn Ligon. The exhibition presents the work of five current photographers whose works attempt to capture the motion, scale, and texture of the modern city. Given the pivotal role played by urban areas in the formation of LGBT communities, it is no surprise that LGBT artists figure prominently. Zoe Leonard has had a wide-ranging career in photography, sculpture, film and video. 

Diana Davies. Gay "Be-In," Sheep Meadow, Central Park, New York, June 28, 1970.

The first LGBT pride marches were held on June 28, 1970. Originally called Christopher Street Liberation Day, marches were held in 1970 to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.  Craig Rodwell, activist and owner of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, obtained support for the march from ERCHO’s (Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations) November 1969 convention. Rodwell drew in support from New York City activists and organizations, such as Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance, to create the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee to plan the 

The seminal 1970s San Fransisco drag troupe The Cockettes, whose luminous members included Hibiscus and Sylvester, are holding a reunion of their surviving members this week in New York City with an amazing range of performances and forums across the city.  The reunion is, in part, to celebrate the gift of the papers of Cockette Martin Worman to The New York Public Library's Billy Rose Theatre Division. Worman worked as a playwright, director, actor, and lyricist with the Cockettes and continued this work until his death from AIDS in 1993. Worman worked with Divine, Mink Stole, Richard "Scrumbly" Koldewyn, Reno, and Robert Wilson---among many others---and served as a mentor to 

For LGBT Pride month, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will be holding two exciting drag programs in the month of June. On Thursday, June 19, at 6:00 p.m. will be:
Drag Show Video Vérité: The Ultimate NYC Drag Show…on Video Tape
An ALL NEW edition, featuring rare footage of: Adrian, Joan Jett Blakk, Lady Bunny, Agnes de Garron, Mo B. Dick, Dorian, Ethyl Eichelberger, Clover Honey, La JohnJoseph, Dean Johnson, John Kelly as Dagmar Onassis, Legs Malone, Glenn Marla, Glenda Orgasm, Rollerena, Flawless Sabrina, Sister Tui, Sweetie, Sherry Vine, Rose Wood, Holly Woodlawn, and many, many more. And the world premiere of Taylor Mac’s 

The New York Public Library is proud to be co-sponsoring the 2008 GLBT Archives, Libraries, Museums, and Special Collections Conference that is being hosted by The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY. The conference will include an orientation to the LGBT archives at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library and a closing tour of the Black Gay and Lesbian Archives at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The full conference schedule is available online. Register now, if you haven't already.

On April 17th at 6 p.m., Pulitzer and Tony award-winning playwright and LGBT Committee Ambassador Edward Albee will be in conversation with Marion Seldes at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.  Among his many plays, Albee is best known for his works Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Seascape, Three Tall Women, and The Goat or Who is Sylvia, as well as the adapations of Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. Albee's scripts and papers are held in the Library's Billy Rose Theatre Division. Marian Seldes is a stage and screen actress who has won numerous Tony and Drama Desk awards in her 

Pictured above are James St. James, original club kid and YA author; Megan Honig, Young Adult Librarian at the Seward Park Branch; and Hillias J. Martin, Assistant Coordinator of Young Adult Services, at last year's Anti-Prom held at the Donnell Library Center.  The Anti-Prom provides an alternative, safe-space for LGBTQ teens, who may not feel welcome at official school proms or dances, as well as many other teens. This year's Anti-Prom will be held at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue the evening of June 5th. We are gearing up for a major event. Save the date!

This week The New York Public Library published our 79th edition of Books for the Teen Age, which pulls together the best in young adult literature, including books for LGBTQ teens.  Check out this year's exciting LGBTQ selections:

Transparent, by Cris Beam, from Harcourt. Teen transgirls surviving LA's mean streets.

Dahlia Season, by Myriam Gurba, from Manic D. Books. Desiree: trans, fierce, Chicana, survivor.

Split Screen, by Brent Hartinger, from HarperTempest. Min and Russell on the set, finding love and lust.

Out Law, by Lisa Keen, from Beacon. What LGBT youth should know about their legal rights.

The 

David Eisenbach’s Gay Power: An American Revolution provides a definitive history of gay and lesbian activism in New York City from the 1950s to the 80s. His study was researched largely through the collections of the New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division. Eisenbach begins his study with consideration of the politics of the closet in 1950s New York City. In the 50s, New York had one of the largest and most active gay scenes in the country, and yet, gays and lesbians were continually endangered by public censure, police entrapment and brutality, random violence, and blackmail. Eisenbach shows how Edward Sagarin’s The Homosexual in America 

 Lincoln Kirstein. Photograph by George Platt Lynes. Gift of Marie-Jeanne, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Copyright Estate of George Platt Lynes

2007 was the centennial of the birth of Lincoln Kirstein who, with George Balanchine, co-founded the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet, two of the most important dance institutions in the world. In the fall The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts celebrates his unparalleled achievements with the exhibition Lincoln Kirstein: Alchemist. The exhibition was also a testament to his importance in the development of the Library's world-class Dance 

 
"Here on 42nd Street it was less elegant but no less strange," a young novelist wrote in the early fifties. "He loved this street, not for the people or the shops but for the stone lions that guarded the great main building of the Public Library, a building filled with books and unimaginably vast, and which he had never yet dared to enter." The passage is from Go Tell It on the Mountain. James Baldwin was one of many who got over their fear, their awe of the lions and the marble and the grandeur. He, too, walked in, and he left behind his books, a shelf of gifts in a palace of many millions.
David Remnick, The New Yorker,
May 22, 1995
Tomorrow LIVE from the NYPL 

Hi, I’m Jason Baumann and I’m editor of the LGBT @ NYPL blog and staff manager of the Library’s LGBT Committee.  Professionally, I’m Special Assistant to the Director of the New York Public Library and teach courses in education outreach and cultural diversity at Pratt Institute’s School of Library and Information Science. In addition to my work in public libraries, I also have a long-time commitment to LGBT activism. I was an active member of ACT-UP and Queer Nation, a performer with Lavender Light: The Black and People of All Colors Lesbian and Gay Gospel Choir, and have been involved for many years with the New York City circle of the Radical Faeries. I’m