The world’s only independent lesbian museum, The Charlotte Museum has just opened in Auckland, New Zealand. Its on Karangahape Road which is commonly known as K’ Road and has a long, queer history. In the 1970s, it was home to one of the country’s first lesbian nightclubs, as well as several gay clubs in the ’80sThe idea for the volunteer-run museum started to grow in the early 2000s when a group of Auckland queer women started an archive project, working together to collect and document stories about their community. They were sending some of this material to the Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand in Wellington, the country’s capital. But when one of the women tried to get the archives to take a badge collection and a T-shirt she’d made out of a bedspread, the archive declined. Like many archives, they didn’t take objects like textiles, partly because they’re more difficult to maintain and manage than books and other printed matter.
But anyone who knows lesbian culture knows the importance of badges: those sometimes witty political statements that are cheap and easy to make, that can be worn at an event and then taken off if they might inadvertently out the wearer. To lose them would be to lose a significant part of queer history.
Since the move, they’re getting as many visitors a day as they were getting each month at the old place, even in their first month. The collection includes as many as 7,000 publications in the research library, 400 pieces of art, 600 badges and 400 T-shirts. There’s a personal collection of about 25 lighters with images of women on them. Although there is not a specific collection of Indigenous Māori items, there are a number of pieces by Māori women in the art collection.
Now that it’s in the queerest part of New Zealand’s largest city (Auckland has a population of about 1.4 million people, making it the fifth largest city in Oceania), the Charlotte Museum is fully tapped into a bustling LGBTQ+ community.
https://www.charlottemuseum.co.nz/
1a Howe Street, Freemans Bay, Auckland, New Zealand
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, it’s The Dinah which is considered the largest lesbian/queer women event in the world. Created by Mariah Hanson in 1991 under the Club Skirts Marquis, Mariah created the world-famous Dinah Shore Weekend in 1991 with just that intention in mind – to create an exciting, community-building, life-affirming, unimaginably stellar experience for her customers. She chose the world-renowned Palm Springs Modern Art Museum to host her first Dinah. Mariah knew an event inside this spectacular museum, surrounded by priceless artwork, was just the kind of statement she was trying to make – that our community is worth the very best and she was going to offer it.
9/20- 9/24, 2023 Check out the full schedule https://www.facebook.com/TheDinah
Labels: 2023, Auckland NZ, first lesbian museum, lesbians, Mariah Hanson, Palm Springs Cultural Center, The Charlotte Museum, The Dinah Shore
