Earlier this year the National Museum of American History took in some artifacts related to LGBT history. I saw the news when it was reported, and was glad for that, but also surprised that this needed announcing or that the idea was new. On Tuesday 18 November I visited the museum with Dorothy and we met a friend from outside the museum who shared their biased perspective on museums in DC, then went on to talk to some museum curators.
This person told us that DC has ways of appearing to be the city that visitors want to see and of confirming beliefs. As the capital it receives guests from all of the country, some of whom like to see social progress and some of whom want to promote traditional values like suppression of LGBT culture. People who want to see progress can find some LGBT history in the museums if they look and ask for it, and other people who do not want to see LGBT culture sometimes prefer that no one else see it either. Supposedly, there have been past controversies about having exhibits at the museum about HIV, because socially conservative people equate activism to address and prevent HIV as yielding to offensive special interests. Supposedly, this kind of opposition still exists today, which was a surprise to me as I thought people at this point were aware that HIV is a problem for everyone. The result of this kind of opposition is that there is no formal LGBT collection in the Smithsonian, but perhaps the day will come when there is an endowed LGBT curator position so that there can always be a funded staff person to curate such a collection as it is established. I was later to talk with some Smithsonian curators about artifacts they held related to LGBT culture, but I did not speak at all with any of them about any of the political controversy which might exist relating to showcasing LGBT culture because I thought all the rumors about opposition from certain tourists and certain politicians might be true. The Smithsonian does have the unusual position of being a national museum in the capital and cannot help but be influenced by the political climate, and right now with gay marriage being legalized everywhere, I would rather otherwise keep tension down as the status quo continues to be redefined.
Besides the fun of visiting, Dorothy and I were visiting to ask the Smithsonian’s help in planning an outreach event for Wiki Loves Pride, which is a Wikipedia event to commemorate LGBT pride month. This meeting was arranged by Diane Shaw, a special collections curator at the museum who is also a participant in Wikimedia community events. She was our host and introduced us to the others. Curators at the Smithsonian will provide assistance in finding all sorts of things, and even though there was no formal LGBT collection, certain persons were friendly to suggest to us what kind of images and information and documents might be of interest to our Wikipedia event, in which volunteers would browse through whatever media we shared and integrate the facts and pictures into Wikipedia articles. We talked with Katherine Ott, curator of medicine and science, who showed and described to us health devices and products including a history of birth control and condom packaging. She also showed us the museum’s disability collection within the medical displays, and while that is not related to LGBT culture, we Wikipedians have had a lot of requests to share more about the history of differently abled people and better acceptance in society of all people. We talked with Erin Blasco, a social media coordinator for the museum who said that she would like to know if we re-use information from the museum. Daniel Gifford said hello to us as a person who oversees the relationships between the Smithsonian and external organizations, and he asked us about the nature of Wikipedia and how it comes to happen that anyone may add information to it. We told him that it happened according to what any individual sought to volunteer with the information which they contributed themselves.
We met Franklin Robinson, an archivist, who was supportive of our project and who I now see has “LGBT” listed as one of his interests on his museum profile. He showed us archival materials held by the Smithsonian which were of interest to LGBT communities, but were currently not placed. Among the collection were issues of Mattachine Society publications and the Spartacus Gay Guides, posters from pride parades, then a lot of personal photos. He showed us some photo collections and described the trouble of sharing them. For example, he had some mug shots and police records of people in the United States who were convicted of sodomy in the 1920s. These are interesting from a historical perspective because that crime no longer exists here, but depending on context it could be insulting to show the records and the police arrest photos. He also showed a personal photo album from what seemed to be a rich enough boy in the 1930s. The photos look just like any gay boy photo collection of boys on vacation, boys wearing identical clothing, and boys standing around gay art. Notes on the back of the photo identify the person in the picture, and also have gay messaging. I was told that a museum representative contacted the family about personality rights and copyright, because these photos are at the edge of the earliest documentation of gay culture in photo. The family, so I was told, remains homophobic and does not want their relative’s life presented in a way that celebrates gay culture, and for that reason, do not want the photos shared. It seems that the photos were acquired when the person in them died and all of his property was discarded.
Tentatively we said that meeting Saturday 6 June 2015 might be a good day for a Wiki Loves Pride meetup in DC.
Someone suggested that we talk to Ernesto “Chico” Rosa at AARP, who does LGBT outreach for them.
Some suggested that we talk to Michael Olivera, an archivist at UCLA.