The New York Public Library’s LGBT Collections will be drawn from heavily next year for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Tony Marx, president of the library, and members of the LGBT Initiative co-chaired by trustee Carey Maloney and Hermes Mallea, hosted a reception for LGBTQ leaders September 24 in the Trustees Room to preview two “milestone exhibitions”: “Love and Resistance: Stonewall at 50,” set for February 14 through June 30 of next year, “Walt Whitman,” which will be on display March 29 through July 27.
Jason Baumann, who heads the library’s LGBT Initiative, said the Stonewall exhibit will focus on LGBTQ life and activism from 1965 through ‘75. Carolyn Vega, who curates the library’s collection of English and American Literature, said the Whitman exhibit will mark the 200th anniversary of the poet’s birth.
Marx noted that the library is home to collections from the Mattachine Society, the Gay Activists Alliance, the Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen papers and photographs, ACT UP, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and more. In addition to past LGBTQ exhibitions, including for Stonewall 25, Marx said the library welcomes an annual prom for LGBTQ youth at its Astor Hall.
Maloney said the library “has unfailingly been at the forefront of LGBTQ advocacy” and dubbed its collection on queer history “the world’s greatest.”
