Queens Museum ExhibitThe Lavender Line:
Coming Out in Queens
Jun 9 2017
Jul 30 2017
En español abajo
To mark the 25th anniversary of the Queens Pride Parade in June, the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Community College/CUNY will present The Lavender Line: Coming Out in Queens at the Queens Museum, a multimedia exhibition of the Queens LGBTQ community from the 1990s to the present. Curated by LaGuardia Community College/CUNY faculty Thierry Gourjon and Javier Larenas, the exhibition uses photographs, flyers, video footage, and audio recollections to illuminate the pride and protests of a community unknown to most New Yorkers.
The historical portion of the exhibition draws largely from the Collection of Queens City Council Member Daniel Dromm (District 25), recently accessioned at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, and from the personal archive of photographer and filmmaker Richard Shpuntoff. Additional artifacts come from the personal archive of the Majority Leader of the City Council and Queens Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer (District 26).
Dromm, a public school teacher in Queens from 1984 to 2009, was a founder of the Queens Lesbian and Gay Pride Committee and an organizer of the Queens LGBTQ Pride Parade and Festival, inaugurated in Jackson Heights in 1993. Shpuntoff directed the 2016 film Julio in Jackson Heights, the story of the 1990 gay bashing murder of Julio Rivera, an event that along with the opposition to the inclusive LGBTQ Children of the Rainbow multicultural curriculum, galvanized Queens activists to combat hate and eventually start a Pride Parade. Van Bramer became a gay rights activist as a student at St. John’s University in the early 1990s.
The Lavender Line: Coming Out in Queens illustrates the evolution of the Queens Pride Parade from a community event in 1993, with some 1,000 marchers and thousands of spectators, to a festival that attracts crowds of more than 40,000 and gains the support of major politicians and corporate sponsors. The parade, a reflection of the ethnic diversity of Queens, remains an opportunity to come out and celebrate amid cheering neighbors, festive music, and colorful floats.
The LaGuardia Community College Photography Degree Program was an integral part of the project and their Gardiner-Shenker Student Scholars are responsible for the contemporary images in the exhibition, under the guidance of the exhibit co-curators.