Posts by Jason Baumann

Guest post Perry Brass.

The politics around disclosure are complicated and they are not getting any easier.

Opportunity to study and collaborate with artist, writer, and activist Avram Finkelstein.

Guest post by Avram Finkelstein.

While we prefer to think of art as a reflection of our culture that mirrors our higher selves—and it frequently is—art can also serve as a dividing line.

Without access to the education needed to pry open the class codes woven into the cannon of Western European art, it can be impenetrable. And without the economic mobility that allows us to visit the great galleries of the world, or the leisure time to go to a museum just a few train stops away, art can easily exceed our 

Guest post by Perry Brass.

Lenny Ebreo, Marc Rabinowitz, and I were thrilled about the forum that took place at Washington Square Methodist Church in 1972. Because of the forum, Lenny now had some connection with the New York City Department of Public Health, which after John Lindsey's administration had been re-organized around local community health centers. He began to fixate on the idea of community health. If we could get our community healthy, in mind and body, it would genuinely come together. He revealed a bombshell idea: we'd open our own gay health clinic in the 

Guest post by Avram Finkelstein.

As a founding member of the political collective that produced the image most closely associated with AIDS activism, Silence=Death, I'm frequently asked to speak about this poster. Over the decades people have thanked me for it, telling me the poster was the rallying cry that drew them to political activism.

I have a slightly different take on that. In essence and intention, the political poster is a public thing. It comes to life in the public sphere, and is academic outside of it. 

A guest post by Perry Brass.

Sometimes it's difficult to realize looking back at an activity how far ahead it was. But for the three founders—Leonard Ebreo, Marc Rabinowitz, and myself—of the Gay Men's Health Project Clinic, the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast, opening in 1972 in an unfinished concrete basement at 247 West Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village—this wasn't difficult. We just had no idea how far reaching the term "gay men's health" would become. But we knew the clinic was vitally 

V.D. is no camp, Mattachine Society of New YorkOne of my favorite objects in the exhibition isn't about AIDS at all. It's a small brochure by the Mattachine Society of New York. Titled "VD is No Camp," the small brochure tries to speak in a funny direct way from one gay man to another about the risks of love and desire. I included it in the show because it points to something very 

Given yesterday's historic Supreme Court decision overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, it's good to take a moment to look back at the struggles for marriage equality.

In many current debates about the direction of LGBT political struggles, marriage equality has been portrayed as a conservative move after the radicalism of 1970s Gay Liberation and later Queer politics. However, a closer look reveals that LGBT activists have been deeply concerned over the right to marry since the start of modern gay 

Tonight at 9pm, HBO will premiere Jeffrey Schwarz's new documentary VITO: The Life of Gay Activist Vito Russo. Extensive research for the film was undertaken at the New York Public Library using Vito Russo's papers, as well as many other collections, such as the Gay Activists Alliance Records and ACT UP New York Records.

I was privileged to preview 

Tomorrow, November 1st at 6pm, join Thomas Glave (English, General Literature, and Rhetoric, SUNY Binghamton) at the CUNY Graduate Center for this year's Audre Lorde/Essex Hemphill Memorial Lecture. Thomas Glave is the author of Whose Song? and Other Stories, The Torturer's Wife, and the essay collection Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (winner of a 2005 Lambda Literary Award). He is editor of the anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (winner of a 2008 Lambda Literary Award). The Audre Lorde/Essex Hemphill Memorial Lecture is 

 "We all know that Gay is Good. It's up to us to get out there and make it better---much better!"

  In case you need some inspiration this National Coming Out Day, check out It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating A Life Worth Living edited by Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller. The book shares stories of coming out and thriving from LGBT notables from Gene Robinson to Suze Orman,  as well as everyday people. My favorite is Urvashi Vaid's essay "The only reason big changes happen is when people like you and me decide to fight for things to change, when we take action to make 

 Given today's historic repeal of DADT, it important to remember just how long exclusion from military service has been affecting LGBT people in the U.S. It is often thought that exclusion of gays and lesbians from military service focussed in WWII. However, there is evidence that there were soldiers discharged for homosexuality as early as the American revolutionary war. Last year, the Library received a unique letter documenting a member of the U.S. navy who was discharged for homosexuality in 1914. The donor, David Jarrett kindly transcribed the letter with the donation. The letter is 

  If you haven’t already, make sure to check out Michael Schiavi’s new biography of Vito Russo: Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo.  As Schiavi eloquently glosses—“Twenty years after Vito’s death, we remember him as the author of The Celluloid Closet, as one of Gay Liberation’s angriest agitators, and as one of the earliest, most eloquent voices raised on behalf of people with AIDS.”  The biography was researched using the 

 

To mark the 30th anniversary of the first documented case of HIV/AIDS, the Mid-Manhattan Library, the Columbia Center for Oral History and the HIV Story Projectare co-sponsoring a special program. Tonight at 6:30pm at the Mid-Manhattan Library, three oral historians play 

Remember, marriage equality passed in New York last night because of 40 years of political activism. Pictured above is GAA's Jim Owles with "Gay Power to Gay Lovers" wedding cake at the Gay Activist Alliance's zap of the New York City Clerk for marriage equality in 1971. CONGRATULATIONS!!!

In case you missed the runway fashion show at this year's Anti-Prom, the fabulous designs of the students from the High School of Fashion Industries are on view in the Fifth Avenue window of the Mid-Manhattan Library. And to see the story behind the designs check out our online videos of Design NYPL 2011. The teen-selected theme for the 2011 Anti-Prom was "Super Prom." Teen designers explored the meaning of super, from caped crusaders to spandex-wearing super villains and everything in between during their visits to the Library for the 

 

 

Boy meets Boy while wandering in the Vast Fields of Ordinary? Kicked Out Tales from the Closet? From Glee to DADT to It Gets Better, what’s happening in the world of LGBT youth? Here from authors and illustrators as they talk diversity, identity and visibility in the YA book world. For ages 12 and up.

Today at the Library's Mulberry Street Branch at 4:30pm.