Week of 06.01.25 (Museum/pride edition)
There are some obvious choices so if you haven’t seen the Ruth Asawa Retrospective or Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art, run don’t walk, but… in the spirit of PRIDE month, we are making this one easy and focusing on the extravagant wonders of all things PRIDE.
Thing one: 50 Years of Pride
Free first Wednesdays: June 4,2025
On June 27, 1970, a small group of LGBTQ people marched down Polk Street—then San Francisco’s most prominent queer neighborhood—to mark an event called “Christopher Street Liberation Day.” Commemorating the one-year anniversary of the historic Stonewall uprising on Christopher Street in New York City, the march was followed the next afternoon, June 28, by an intimate “gay-in” picnic at Speedway Meadows in Golden Gate Park.
Fifty years later, the modest gatherings of 1970 have evolved into San Francisco Pride, a globally famous annual parade and celebration. One of the city’s most beloved public festivals, Pride welcomes hundreds of thousands of participants and spectators from around the world the last weekend in June.
This exhibition features nearly 60 photographs spanning five decades of Pride celebrations. 50 Years of Pride honors the LGBTQ community coming into its own in the best of times and the worst of times. Images drawn from the GLBT Historical Society’s archives are joined by photographs held by other institutions, as well as works by over 20 independent queer photographers who have captured Pride over the years.
Curators Lenore Chinn and Pamela Peniston have employed a multifaceted curatorial approach, selecting images that document the event’s humble origins in the 1970s to the massive gatherings of recent years. Their choices highlight the diversity of both the photographers and the subjects depicted. The curators evaluated each photo based on its intrinsic aesthetic beauty as well as its ability to convey how people were experiencing Pride events.
LOCATION: GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94114, (415) 777-5455
HOURS: Tuesday–Sunday: 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday: Closed
Cover image: Installation view of stay, take your time, my love. Photo: Nicholas Lea Bruno.
thing two: stay, take your time, my love
May 16–December 7, 2025
always free
Opening May 2025 is stay, take your time, my love, site-specific solo exhibition by David Antonio Cruz, including newly commissioned paintings and drawings created in response to the queer histories of San Francisco. Visitors will experience select works from Cruz’s chosenfamily series in an intimate, tactile space, mirroring the plush interiors of his compositions. The exhibition celebrates the power of non-biological bonds between queer, trans, and genderfluid people, particularly communities of color. Figures in Cruz’s group portraits lounge together in loving, nonhierarchical arrangements, defying the heteropatriarchy of traditional European and American colonial portraiture.
In the face of discriminatory policies and rising violence around the nation, Cruz’s new work will act as a “love letter” to the Bay Area queer community—uplifting local figures and capturing intimate moments of touch, support, and empowerment. His intricately detailed work will layer references to art history, the handkerchief code, leather culture, and iconic sites around the San Francisco landscape.
“Chosen family are the folks that love you undeniably, unconditionally. They don’t come with restrictions or rules. This is our safety net, this is how we create home.”
—David Antonio Cruz for The Guardian, 2023
LOCATION: Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, 345 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA
HOURS: Wednesday-Sunday: 11am-5pm, Open late Thursdays: 11am-7pm, Closed Mondays, Tuesdays, and public holidays.
Thing Three: Harvey Milk Reimagined
May 31–June 7, 2025 (Ends SATURday!)
Tickets: $50–188
Stewart Wallace, Composer; Michael Korie, Librettist
In a fitting tribute to gay rights icon and activist Harvey Milk, Opera Parallèle will produce a completely new and eagerly anticipated production of Harvey Milk by composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie. Newly revised into two acts instead of three, with new music and a tighter cast from its sprawling original Houston Grand Opera premiere in 1995 and San Francisco Opera debut in 1996, this reimagined version of Harvey Milk was originally intended for an earlier Opera Parallèle season, but was delayed by the pandemic.
The powerful and tragic opera celebrates Milk’s enduring legacy and contributions to the nascent LGBTQ+ movement, his early life in New York and relocation to San Francisco, later becoming the first openly gay man in 1978 to be elected to public office in California. Milk served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for 11 months before being assassinated, along with then-Mayor George Moscone, at San Francisco City Hall.
Along with the opera, YBCA is excited to display a unique selection of Milk’s personal artifacts and historical ephemera, in collaboration with the GLBT Historical Society. From personal letters to campaign materials to photos from the frontlines of the movement, the display offers additional dimension and detail to Milk’s life and story—and is a powerful complement to the moving and inspiring opera performance.
Presented in partnership with YBCA. Commissioned by Opera Parallèle and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Used by arrangement with Schott Music Corporation, agent for Sidmar Music, publisher and copyright owner.
LOCATION: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
HOURS: 11am-5pm, Wed thru Sun, Mon & Tue closed
