Rich Wilson: Aspects of Queer Existence in 19th-Century America

Nineteenth century LGBT artifacts from the collection of Rich Wilson

Introduction

Items in this on-line exhibit are more than just old prints, photographs, and books. They are artifacts telling us about our past. The individuals highlighted here offer us a glimpse into history that has been buried, ignored, “heterosexualized,” or destroyed. While encountering them, we must, as historian Jonathan Ned Katz indicates, try to comprehend that “their world's structuring of eros and love, their ideas, and their language” differ from our own concepts about gender, sex, and desire.^[1]

The exhibit's theme is the 19th-century queer experience in the United States. It was an age of “romantic friendships” and “Boston marriages.” It was also an age when “alienists” called us “inverts.” Back then, a Viennese enthusiast for Hungarian literature coined words essential to the binary system of “homosexual” and “heterosexual” that still shapes our thinking. Additionally, in that bygone era, important seeds were planted that eventually flowered into “gay liberation.”

Much of the material in this online exhibit first appeared in a group show organized by the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History and held at the Leslie + Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Both can be found online and on facebook.