When Abigail Baer arrived at the Demuth Foundation in Lancaster, Pennsylvania six years ago after being hired as its executive director, she discovered visitors to the historic residence and studio of the late artist Charles Demuth left without learning much about the celebrated master watercolorist. One detail about his life that largely went unmentioned was that Demuth was a gay man.
"When I started, you could come to the Demuth Museum located in the artist's home and studio and not really learn much about him or see his work," recalled Baer, a straight ally who had been working in development and programming at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. "We quickly began incorporating that."
Baer and her team rethought how to make the best use of the narrow 1760 brick row house and its five rooms, which included the artist's studio. They embarked on a renovation of the spaces that opened to the public in April.
And to help fully detail how Demuth navigated early 20th century life as a gay man, the foundation received a $25,000 grant in 2022 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. It engaged public historian and researcher, Susan Ferentinos, Ph.D., to examine what evidence there was in Demuth's archival papers and other sources to confirm his sexual orientation as well as paint a picture of the queer community at that time.
Due to the homoerotic nature of Demuth's artwork, such as a drawing of two sailors holding out their penises to urinate, many had assumed he was gay. Ferentinos was tasked with either proving or disproving that assumption.
"Susan did a great job dissecting that from a non-art lens," said Baer, noting that in addition to sailors, Demuth focused on such topics as vaudeville, jazz clubs, and Turkish baths. "These were places where the gay community was present."
Although Ferentinos didn't discover any love letters to definitively document Demuth had a male lover, she did discern from his writings signs of a queer relationship. Another obvious clue was the fact Demuth was a lifelong bachelor and never married.
"Interestingly though, Susan in her research found some language in some of the letters, because she knows the terms and tone and how things were expressed and worded in the early 20th century," said Baer. "We kind of see, oh, there was a relationship here. We don't know exactly who the person is or was, but there was something happening."
The foundation posted Ferentinos' findings to its website, which now clearly states on the biography page that, "As an artist and a gay man in the early 20th century, Demuth's social and professional circles included that of the avant-garde art and queer communities."
The Demuth Foundation's efforts to "queer up" how it approaches the life story of its namesake and tells that aspect of the artist's life in its galleries and online caught the attention of Ken Lustbader, 63, a gay man who is co-director of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. He reached out to Baer and ended up inviting her to join a panel in June at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture for a discussion about how historic home museums can interpret the LGBTQ history of the occupants of their residences.
"Having this documented helps younger people understand they are part of a natural way of being who they are and can understand they are not alone," said Lustbader, a historic preservation consultant.
New efforts undertaken
The Demuth Museum's reinterpretation project is one of a number of such LGBTQ historical efforts being undertaken at similar institutions across the country, noted Lustbader. To help document them and foster connections between the various organizations and local groups doing the work, Lustbader formed the National Committee to Explore LGBTQ+ Site-based History.
Consisting of seven members from across the country, including lesbian Bay Area-based historian and historic preservation planner Shayne Watson, it set out to survey what LGBTQ history projects are being conducted across the U.S. Their aim in doing so is to share best practices and ideas among the people engaged in such work.
"I just don't want to lose the momentum," said Watson, who is a lead organizer with the nonprofit Friends of the Lyon-Martin House working to preserve the San Francisco home of the late lesbian pioneering couple Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin. "We are calling for a nationwide LGBTQ preservation group that would keep this momentum going."
The first step was compiling a list of those individuals working on LGBTQ heritage preservation projects.
"No one knows who is doing what and where," noted Lustbader.
In December 2021, Lustbader received a $100,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, with the NYC sites project serving as a fiscal sponsor, toward launching a survey with the goal of developing a national network for people engaged in LGBTQ historical efforts.
"The goal is not identifying sites," explained Lustbader. "We are not looking at counting every site in the U.S. with LGBTQ history. We are more interested in who is doing the work and what are the needs and deficits."
With the funding it received, the committee created a survey and circulated it as far and wide as it could. It then held four virtual focus groups for the people who had submitted responses to the survey or wanted to participate, the last of which was held over the summer.
"Over 300 people responded to the survey. We thought we were going to get 40 to 50 responses, at most, from around the country," said Lustbader.
A total of 390 people took part in the survey. It resulted in a list of 160 specific LGBTQ history projects.
"I was moved by those we got from people in rural areas, especially in the southern United States," said Watson. "It is easy to think when you are in San Francisco or New York I am the only one doing stuff out here or Ken is the only one doing stuff in New York. That is not the case at all."
One member of the committee that conducted the survey was Steven Brawley, a gay man who founded and oversees the St. Louis LGBTQ Historic Project. He started it in 2007 and launched its website at stlouislgbthistory.com in 2012.
"My goal has always been to make sure the fly-over cities are not ignored," said Brawley.
With the national survey, Brawley said a main goal was to have "not just the coast but middle America" represented. The committee also prioritized, he said, "making sure the full spectrum of the alphabet was covered."
Fascinating outcome
The outcome was fascinating to see, he said, due to the breadth and scope of the LGBTQIA+ history-related activities the survey captured. There were projects in Alaska, Hawaii, and across the 48 continental states, noted Brawley.
"We were just blown away by the breadth of the programs, whether they are one site or multi-faceted like the one I am leading in St. Louis that is a broad-based community thing," he said. "Our focus now is how to utilize each other to further the cause and how do we help each other out."
He works pro bono on the St. Louis LGBTQ Historic Project, which partners with institutions and universities in Missouri to preserve and tell the state's LGBTQ history. One of the first was his alma mater, the University of Missouri, as it had already created a queer archive.
"We started collecting things in the community and donating to that particular archive," said Brawley, who grew up in the St. Louis region and lives in the suburb of Kirkwood. "They provided trainings to us on how to do oral histories, etc."
When he began such efforts, Brawley found there was a lot of interest in the local LGBTQ community but he didn't have any "real game plan" for how to harness it. It also drew the attention of the local press, and the media coverage led to a number of potential partners to reach out to him about ways they could collaborate.
"I am trying to queer up the St. Louis museum and archive community," said Brawley, who works as an executive vice president of a funding agency that provides state grants to local nonprofits in the region.
One way he aims to achieve his goal is by encouraging museum exhibit designers and curators to think about how to include LGBTQ materials or voices. As one example, Brawley pointed to a show about Route 66 the Missouri History Museum mounted that included a section on guidebooks for travelers who didn't have the same privileges as white, heterosexual Americans had in the 1950s. Brawley lent it several copies of Damron and Lavender travel guides for LGBTQ vacationers from his personal collection.
"We want to make sure all institutions embed us in their exhibits, so they include queer voices," he said, adding the focus shouldn't solely be on "one-and-done" shows specifically about an LGBTQ topic or theme.
His own LGBTQ historical project is not set up as a nonprofit, because Brawley knows there is only so much funding available for such efforts and doesn't want to compete with other organizations that rely on grants and donations. Thus, he sees his main job as being a "cheerleader and champion for these institutions to DEI their collections," using the acronym for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The private Washington University in St. Louis reached out to form a partnership, as it has archival papers from the work begun on campus in the late 1950s by the pioneering human sexuality researchers William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson. It began with Brawley advising students there on collecting LGBTQ community oral histories and grew into a partnership with the school's library to expand its LGBTQ archive and create an online map of local LGBTQ sites.
"They really brought their academic powerhouse together on it. We are on the second version of it," said Brawley of the map.
The partnership with the Missouri History Museum led to its launching in June the "Gateway to Pride" exhibit that runs through next July. Also, this year, the museum named an endowment in Brawley's honor to create a permanent fund to support its LGBTQIA+ collecting initiative.
"It is the first time Missouri has had a stand-alone exhibit on queer history, ever," said Brawley, who served as a community curator for the exhibit. "It is pretty darn cool, to say the least."
Working with a local Ph.D. student, the St. Louis LGBTQ Historic Project teamed up with Trinity Episcopal St. Louis to have its church in the city's West End LGBTQ neighborhood be recognized as an LGBTQ historic site on the National Register of Historic Places. It was listed in 2020.
"The church was an affirming church of its members from the gay and lesbian community way back in the 1950s and 1960s," said Brawley.
Another collaboration has been with the Griot Museum of Black History, helping it collect items from the local African American LGBTQ community.
"They have done some really innovative programming around the impact of HIV/AIDS on the Black community. That was a big thing for them to do," noted Brawley, due to the stigmatization surrounding the disease faced especially by those Black men and women living with HIV or AIDS.
New partnerships
Now, because of the national survey on LGBTQ historical projects, Brawley has formed what he dubbed "sister cities" partnerships with the leaders of such efforts in a number of Midwest and Southern cities.
"We have been partnering. Even just knowing who we are on Instagram, we have been sharing stuff with each other," he said.
Lustbader said the committee's goal is to now create a website with information about the various LGBTQ history projects across the country to inform the public about them. It will offer people a way to connect locally or regionally with LGBTQ site-based history efforts. He hopes to have it live by Pride Month next June.
"It was really great to see people be enthusiastic about sharing their research and projects," said Lustbader. "We need to find a way to sustain this network."
When the Demuth Museum set out to update its displays, it turned to the Alice Austen House on Staten Island in New York for inspiration. As the Bay Area Reporter had noted in a 2021 story about the historic residence, it received designation as a National LGBT Historic Site and updated its exhibits to fully embrace Austin being a lesbian pioneer and photographer who lived in the house with her longtime partner, Gertrude Tate.
"It is incredible, the transformation they have made to that site," said Baer. "That was really helpful to us as we started thinking about this, the possibility, and the approach."
The Demuth staff have now been sharing their own experience with their counterparts, presenting their reinterpretation effort at a state museum conference in April. They have applied to be presenters at several conferences in 2025 to continue to share what they learned with staff from other historic sites about telling queer stories.
They went through a gender and sexuality training offered by their local YMCA so they could comfortably talk about Demuth's life story and not stumble over LGBTQ terminology. They also discussed why they weren't "outing" Demuth with the new approach and decided to ask several curators and art historians to select one of his artworks and interpret it through an LGBTQ lens, which is available on its website.
"It boils down to authenticity. We wanted to be genuine in how we talk about Charles Demuth and his life," said Baer. "It did impact the work; it did impact his social experiences. So, as we talk about him, we want to honor him and his life, and this is a big component of it."
Baer applauded the work the national LGBTQ historical committee has undertaken to also connect project leaders and institutions across the country.
"We are all for sort of information sharing," she said. "If we don't work with one another, it is a lot harder."
Never miss a story! Keep up to date on the latest news, arts, politics, entertainment, and nightlife.
Sign up for the Bay Area Reporter's free weekday email newsletter. You'll receive our newsletters and special offers from our community partners.
Support California's largest LGBTQ newsroom. Your one-time, monthly, or annual contribution advocates for LGBTQ communities. Amplify a trusted voice providing news, information, and cultural coverage to all members of our community, regardless of their ability to pay -- Donate today!