To date, there has been no movie, book, or exhibition dedicated to the LGBTQ history of Brooklyn, New York City’s most populous borough; yet this history stretches back before the word “homosexual” was even coined in 1869.
The exhibition On the (Queer) Waterfront tells these forgotten stories through art and ephemera that examine how the Brooklyn waterfront has nurtured queer lives, from 1850 up to today. Open now through August 4th at the Brooklyn Historical Society.
Read a review of the exhibit in The Brooklyn Paper, or one in BKLYNR, or watch this video from News 12 Brooklyn.
Entertainers
Singer and Dancer Mabel Hampton rehearsing at Coney Island c.1920
Publicity materials from popular 19th century drag king, Ella Wesner
For many working-class queer people, singing, dancing, doing drag, or being exhibited as a freak provided the rare opportunity to make a living without living in the closet. In the theaters of downtown Brooklyn and Coney Island, queer life has flourished for over a century. OT(Q)W will examine figures ranging from 19th century drag kings Ella Wesner and Florence Hines, to 20th century figures like dancer Mabel Hampton and comedian Burt Savoy.
Sex Workers
Third Sex Plague Strikes Anew! Broadway Brevities,1932
Photo of Loop-the-Loop, an early 20th century transgender sex worker
The docks, bathhouses, and waterfront bars of Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, and the Navy Yard provided under-surveilled spaces for cisgender men and transgender women to cruise for sexual encounters and trade sex for money in an era when “sodomy” was outlawed.
This section will touch on many time periods, including 19th century “inverts” and WWII sailors who dabbled in sex work.
Artists
19th century author and civil rights activist, Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson, who lived on the Brooklyn waterfront in the 1890s
Engraved frontispiece from Leaves of Grass, based on a daguerreotype of Walt Whitman made by artist Gabriel Harrison
A letter written by Hart Crane, while living at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn Heights
Throughout history, queer artists and activists have pooled their resources to create utopian communal houses on Brooklyn’s waterfront, from 7 Middagh Street (home to WH Auden, George Davies, Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten, Gypsy Rose Lee, and others) to DUMBA (the late 20th/early 21stcentury queer people of color political collective in DUMBO that was home to video artist Rashaad Newsome, and debuted/nurtured work by Le Tigre, Tribe 8, and John Cameron Mitchell.) OT(Q)W will also examine visual artists like painter Edward Casey and set designer Oliver Smith.
Sailors
Arrest card from a 1916 gay bar bust on Sands Street
Sailor, inventor, and model Christian Bill Miller, who was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during WWII
For lesbians and gay men, the allure of life at sea combined escape from small towns with long periods of same-sex company. To merchant sailors (like Emil Opffer, lover of poet Hart Crane) and military service members (like Rusty Brown, who also worked as a drag king at Coney Island), Brooklyn provided a uniquely welcoming port of call.
Factory Hands
Scrapbook from Anne Moses, who worked at the Todd Shipyard in Brooklyn during WWII
During WWII, the factories in and around the Brooklyn Navy Yard offered previously unimaginable freedom to many working-class women, particularly lesbians. OT(Q)W will display never before seen photos and scrapbooks by lesbian women who worked in and around the Navy Yard during WWII.
Why The Waterfront?
As places of cultural intermingling, urban anonymity, sexual potential, and undocumented manual labor, waterfronts worldwide have often provided havens for queer life. Lying outside the city’s more surveilled regions, urban waterfronts have given marginalized communities room for the expression of outlaw sexuality, non-normative gender presentations, and cross-class sociability.
Never an uncomplicated utopia, these were also places of violence, misogyny, homophobia, and labor exploitation. Yet queer people found ways to sustain themselves and their identities by working along the social peripheries, in order to obtain freedom unavailable elsewhere.
Curatorial Team
Hugh Ryan
Co-curator
On the (Queer) Waterfront draws directly from the research I have done for my book, When Brooklyn Was Queer, which will be published in March of 2019 by St. Martin’s Press. For this work, I received the 2016 Martin Duberman Visiting Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a 2017 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction, and a 2018 Residency at the Watermill Center.
I curated previous shows at La Mama Galleria, The New York Public Library, The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art, and many other venues.
Avram Finkelstein
Co-curator
Avram Finkelstein is a founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives, who has work in the permanent collections of MoMA, The Whitney, and the New Museum, is featured in the artist oral history at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.
Finkelstein's book After Silence: A History of AIDS Through its Image comes out in November 2017 for UC Press.
Rachel Mattson
Curriculum Developer
The accompanying curriculum will be developed by archivist, historian, and educator Rachel Mattson.
Mattson is the co-author/editor of two books about effective history curricular practice: History as Art, Art as History (co-written with Dipti Desai and Jessica Hamlin); and Teaching US History (co-edited with Robert Cohen, Terrie Epstein, and Diana Turk).