Rich Wilson: Aspects of Queer Existence in 19th-Century America
Nineteenth century LGBT artifacts from the collection of Rich Wilson
<<ENTRY UNDER CONSTRUCTION>>
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.[2] 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, New York City. Both organizations have their own websites and Facebook entries.
Exhibit contents
Wilson Collection: Abraham Lincoln
Wilson Collection: Annie Hindle and Ella Wesner
Wilson Collection: Charlotte Cushman
Wilson Collection: Edward Carpenter
Wilson Collection: Emily Blackwell and Elizabeth Cushier
Wilson Collection: “Inverts” and “Alienists”
Wilson Collection: James Buchanan and William Rufus King
Wilson Collection: James Mills Peirce: “Professor X”
Wilson Collection: John Addington Symonds
Wilson Collection: Joseph and His Friend, the Book
Wilson Collection: Karl Kertbeny and Karl Ulrichs
Wilson Collection: Nineteenth Century Gender Transgressions
Wilson Collection: Oscar Wilde
Wilson Collection: Romantic Friendships/Joseph Dennie and Roger Vose
Wilson Collection: Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Whipple
Wilson Collection: Same-Sex Desire and the American Slave Narrative
Wilson Collection: Same-Sex Desire in the Civil War
Wilson Collection: Same-Sex Desire in the Old West
Wilson Collection: Sarah E. Edmonds
Wilson Collection: Susan B. Anthony
Wilson Collection: The Berdache
Wilson Collection: The Calamus Poems
References
- ↑ Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 9.
- ↑ See: Kertbeny: "Homosexual," "Heterosexual," May 6, 1868
