Upcoming Events at San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society Museum
| The Daring Life & Dangerous Times of Eve Adams Author Talk Friday, May 21 6:00–7:30 p.m. PDT Online program Free | $5 suggested donation |
| Author, historian and OutHistory.org founder Jonathan Ned Katz will discuss his new book, The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams (Chicago Review Press, 2021) the story of the daring Jewish lesbian activist Eve Adams. Drawing on startling evidence while carefully distinguishing fact from fiction, Katz presents the first biography of Adams. Born into a Jewish family in Poland, Adams emigrated to the United States in 1912 and befriended anarchists, sold radical publications, and ran lesbian-and-gay-friendly speakeasies in Chicago and New York. In 1925 she risked it all to write and publish a book entitled Lesbian Love, presenting brief portraits of two dozen women (Katz’s book also reprints the long-lost-text of Lesbian Love). Adams’s bold activism caught the attention of the young J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau of Investigation (later the FBI), leading to her surveillance and arrest. In a case that pitted immigration officials, the New York City police, and a biased informer against her, Adams was convicted of publishing an obscene work and of attempting sex with a policewoman deployed to entrap her. Jailed and deported back to Europe, Adams was ultimately murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Register online here. |
| Let the Record Show: Author Sarah Schulman in Conversation With Marc Stein Author Talk Monday, May 24 6:00–8:00 p.m. PDT Online program Free |
| In this event organized by City Lights Booksellers, author Sarah Schulman will discuss her new book Let the Record Show (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021) with Marc Stein, a historian of LGBTQ history at San Francisco State University. Twenty years in the making, Let the Record Show is the most comprehensive political history ever assembled of ACT UP New York and American AIDS activism. Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today’s activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration—and long-overdue reassessment—of the coalition’s inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining with her characteristic rigor and bite how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world. Register online here. |
| Pride Footage Through the Years Mighty Reels Friday, June 4 6:00–7:30 p.m. PDT Online program Free | $5 suggested donation |
| In the first event of our new program series “Mighty Reels,” we’ll be screening a selection of video footage of San Francisco Pride celebrations from years past, drawn from the GLBT Historical Society’s archives. The footage allows us to trace the evolution of Pride over the past half-century, bearing witness to the annual display of joy, performance art, social commentary and community-building. Historian and GLBT Historical Society founding member Gerard Koskovich will lead a conversation interpreting and exploring the clips after the screening. Koskovich was also the co-curator of the society’s 2020 exhibition about the first decade of Pride, Labor of Love: The Birth of San Francisco Pride. Highlighting home movies, drag performances, amateur documentaries, and interviews with queer history-makers, “Mighty Reels” is a quarterly program series that provides an intimate look at the LGBTQ past straight from the camera lens. Each program in the series features a screening of footage from the archives, followed by a discussion with historians, community members and activists on the significance of these images. Register online here. |