The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

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Alexis Bard Johnson, Joseph Hawkins, Susan Anderson and Cameron Shaw

Institution
ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries
Grant Cycle
Spring 2021
Amount
$50,000
Type of Grant
Curatorial Research Fellowships

ONE Archives at the USC Libraries is partnering with the California African American Museum to organize an exhibition and catalogue, Queer Black California: Art and Politics, which presents California as a pioneering site of sustained LGBTQ civil rights struggle and achievement from post-WWII to the present. The exhibition restores histories that have been excluded, adding Black stories to LGBTQ accounts, and recovering queer histories that have been suppressed in narratives of the African American past. The presentation exposits complex ways that artworks and visual culture shaped, advanced, and interpreted Black queer political and social movements. Queer Black California offers a unique perspective, showing viewers the powerful role played by queer Black historical figures in the long struggle for equality and liberation in the United States.

The exhibition concretizes history through the work and lives of people who have contributed to social transformation. Examples include: Bailey Whitaker, a founder of Knights of the Clock; Cleo Bonner, an officer in Daughters of Bilitis; civil rights icon Bayard Rustin; BLK magazine publisher, Alan Bell; performer and activists Sir Lady Java, Sylvester, and Vaginal Davis; founder of the Association of Black Gays, Ron Grayson; and, photographer and collector Lenn Keller, among others. The exhibit also interprets transformative events such as Compton’s Cafeteria riots in San Francisco, publications including BLK Magazine and Aché, and significant locations like Catch ONE in Los Angeles, Ollie’s bar in Oakland, the Love Center church in Oakland, and the Unity Fellowship Church Movement of Los Angeles.

“I love uniforms! Because if there’s nothing there, clothes are certainly not going to make the man. It’s better to always wear the same thing and know that people are liking you for the real you and not the you your clothes make.”

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again)

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
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