News Release

Out at the Library: Celebrating the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center exhibition will go on the road, making stops in six cities across the U.S. this year. The popular exhibition at the San Francisco Public Library last summer has been reconfigured into a vibrantly designed traveling version. The first venue will be the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City, where the exhibition will run from Feb. 23 to April 25.

The traveling exhibition, comprised of 25 specially-designed panels, offers a rare look into the Hormel Center’s unique archives and demonstrates how it ensures the legacy of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. The Hormel Center, opened in 1996, is a leading public archives at the San Francisco Main Library devoted to collecting, preserving and presenting material on all aspects of the LGBT experience. The collections are national and international in scope with a primary focus on northern California. “I’m proud that the San Francisco Public Library’s first-ever traveling exhibition showcases this gem in our crown of important archival collections,” says San Francisco City Librarian Luis Herrera.

Through reproductions of historic photographs and archival materials, the images and stories in the traveling exhibition offer compelling views of remarkable and ordinary lives.

Some of the exhibition’s highlights include panels depicting:

• Leather boots belonging to Dr. Mary Edwards Walker. Walker (1832-1919) was the first female surgeon in the U.S. Army, a humanitarian, and an early advocate for women’s rights, including dress reform. During the Civil War, she risked her life while caring for the sick and wounded.
• Volume six of Der Eigene. Considered the world’s first gay periodical, Der Eigene (“The Self-Owners”) was published by Adolf Brand (1874-1945) from 1896 to 1931. It became the voice of a small movement that advocated Classical Greek pederasty—highly ritualized sexual relationships between men and boys—as a cure for what some saw as the alarming effeminacy of German culture.
• Pulp paperback covers. Including titles such as Warped Desire, Odd Girl Out, and The Gay Year, the lively covers of these mass-produced paperbacks provide a window into another time. Related materials presented in the exhibition include pseudonyms used by LGBT authors and activists, and correspondence between Barbara Grier, founder of Naiad Press, and Patricia Highsmith, who wrote The Price of Salt, under the pseudonym Claire Morgan in 1952.
• An appointment book and a hand-edited draft of a speech by gay rights activist Harvey Milk. The first openly gay man elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Milk (1930-1978) became a visible symbol of the LGBT community’s emergence as a political force. The grief caused by the assassinations of Milk and Mayor George Moscone unified the LGBT community.

The Out at the Library tour schedule is as follows:

• Lesbian Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, New York, NY – Feb. 23-April 25, 2006
• Provincetown Public Library, Provincetown, MA. – May 10-June 8, 2006
• Atlanta-Fulton Central Library, Atlanta, GA – June 21-Sept. 7, 2006
• Swarthmore College Library, Swarthmore, PA – Sept. 25-Nov. 3, 2006
• Oak Lawn Library, Dallas, TX – Feb. 5-April 1, 2007
• Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis, MN – April 20-June 30, 2007

“I’m thrilled to see the traveling version of Out at the Library go on the road,” says Jim Van Buskirk, program manager of the Hormel Center. “The exhibition has the potential to reach an even wider audience with the lesser-known stories from GLBT history, as well as the Hormel Center’s efforts to preserve and make accessible that history.” The tour was made possible by a successful fundraising campaign spearheaded by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library with lead gifts from institutional donors including the Dorian Fund, Gill Foundation, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, Walter and Elise Haas Fund, San Francisco Foundation, van Löben Sels/Rembe Rock Foundation and Wells Fargo Foundation.

Editor’s Note: Photos are available.