The New York Historical

In the process of writing “official” history, sexual identities considered deviant have often intentionally gone unmentioned.

This poster from our collection is for the first National Coming Out Day, held in 1988. It calls out the fact that there have been historians who have purposefully hid q***rness from the biographies of great writers such as James Baldwin and Virginia Woolf, and talented musicians such as Bessie Smith and Cole Porter. By removing an important part of these figures' identities from the story, historical narratives erased a part of who they were—and didn’t allow young q***r people the opportunity to identify role models.

Here's to telling the full story.

Happy 🌈

📷 Designer: Laurie Casagrande, Publisher: Gay and Le***an Community Action Council American, founded 1987, "Unfortunately, History Has Set the Record a Little Too Straight," 1988.

Just putting this reminder of what Penn Station used to look like here...

📷 Interior entry hall and ticket office of Penn Station, 1911.
📷Interior main concourse of Penn Station, 1911.
📷Penn Station arcade, 1911.
📷Penn Station, Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street, undated (ca. 1910). High-angle view from the northeast.

All the collection of The New York Historical.

“My work is at the crossroads between death and rebirth. Discarded materials have been recycled, so they’re born anew, because the artist has the power to do that.” —Betye Saar

During the 2020 pandemic, Betye Saar began rendering her collection of Black dolls in watercolors, bringing them to life in explorations of childhood, ritual, dreams, and make-believe.

Long engaged with mysticism, astrology, and the religious practices of the African diaspora, Saar collects dolls that she feels hold energy from their previous lives—an energy she amplifies in her doll watercolors.

See more in "Betye Saar's Black Dolls," on view through October 4.

🖼️ Betye Saar, Floating Black Doll in Mystic Sky, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects Los Angeles, California. Photo: Paul Salveson

"Saar’s reimagining offered these figurines a new context and a life separate from — or possibly in spite of — their original intentions, transforming their meaning, alchemizing negative imagery into something potent, something positive."

Betye Saar's Black Dolls is on view now at The New York Historical. Read more about the exhibition in Hyperallergic: https://bit.ly/4wQXOhQ

How Betye Saar Set Black Dolls Free Nearing the occasion of her 100th birthday, an exhibition at the New York Historical celebrates Saar’s promised gift of her collection of dolls to the institution.

in 1971, "Vain Victory" came to La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Written and directed by Jackie Curtis and featuring Candy Darling, "Vain Victory" was a continually evolving musical that had frequent script and cast changes across different venues.

The musical was popular yet critically panned. As one critic noted: “…at moments the show reached thrilling levels of highly charged nothing.” Curtis and several of the cast members, including Candy Darling and Mario Montez, were Warhol Superstars, part of the group that surrounded the artist Andy Warhol and appeared in his underground films.

This poster in The New York Historical's collection belonged to Agosto Machado, a Chinese-Spanish-Filipino American performance artist and activist who appeared in the musical.

See this poster and the shoes Candy wore in "Vain Victory" in our installation, "Women Making Theatre in New York City," on view through October 30.

📷 Designer: Rob Lieberman, Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned, 1971.