Browse Exhibits (5 total)
Women’s Activism: Profiles in Dissent
This exhibit focuses on the stories of queer women through five major movements. These movements are women's suffrage, disability rights, LGBTQ+ rights, the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, and reproductive rights. While many of these movements are intimately connected and share activists between them, the focus here is to not only give the general history of these movements, but to highlight the involvement of queer women and women of color.
From Laura Hershey to Loretta Ross, queer women and women of color played both major and minor roles in the women's movement, and pushed forward other social movements as well. This exhibit diverts from the more common emphasis on white, cisgender, heterosexual women by celebrating the significant contributions and enduring legacies of queer women and women of color to help inspire future activism for many years to come.
Click here to view photos from the opening reception for the exhibition at The Center on Colfax on January 25, 2023.
Big Mama Rag Exhibit
Big Mama Rag (BMR) was a lesbian feminist newspaper from 1972 - 1984 started in Denver, Colorado during the height of the civil rights movement of the late 20th century. The woman loving woman owned newspaper concentrated on a mix of art, poetry, original stories, and a world wide focus on women's liberation and feminist activsm, news, and local issues. The newspaper started in the basement of a house in north Capitol Hill near York and Colfax and went through several cycles of membership before winning the "Big Mama Rag v. United States" case in 1984. It was run as a collective with many members creating women's owned businesses to support the work. This exhibit links oral histories, photographs, and outside resources talking about the history of BMR.
Lavender Hill: Then and Now
Where there are people, there have always been queer people.
Lavender Hill is Denver’s queer cultural district.
With the formation of the Lavender Hill Queer Cultural District, activists once again are embracing the color lavender to celebrate our queer heritage. Many contemporary queer community resources, such as The Center on Colfax, find a home within the newly formed district. Cheesman Park and other historic sites in the local neighborhoods continue to be important to Denver’s contemporary queer communities. This exhibit represents a few important locations that are part of Lavender Hill Queer Cultural District and help tell the story of Denver’s rich queer history, from its early days through today.
Explore Lavender Hill's historic sites using the map below and by clicking through the exhibit.
Credits
This exhibit was created as a collaboration between the Lavender Hill Cultural District and the Colorado LGBTQ History Project of The Center on Colfax. Contributors include David Duffield, Rex Fuller, Zach Kotel, Phil Nash and Ashley Schoenbauer. The exhibit was designed by Zach Kotel.
Queering Denver: Queer Womxn Spaces in the 1970s and Jennifer Hathaway
This exhibit is a collaboration between Jennifer Hathaway and the Colorado LGBTQ+ History Project. This exhibit will show womxn owned spaces in Denver from 1974-1980. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we used sources through Colorado Historic Newspapers.
We used Big Mama Rag, a lesbian feminist newspaper from 1974-1984, and Out Front Magazine, an LGBTQ newspaper from 1976-1984 to find spaces, businesses, and events related to the community of women loving women in Denver county. This helps support Jennifer's work from 2023.
This exhibit will offer a map of these spaces, primary source base for women loving women history from 1974-1984 in Big Mama Rag, and it will offer connections to oral histories and sources for Big Mama Rag.
Crunk Intersectionalities
Crunk Intersectionalities
An Exploration of race, gender, and sexuality
The photos captured in the gallery pay homage to leaders and icons of Queer Black History with a focus on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.
Those represented here reflect national and local stories of LGBTQ+ Black diaspora and their impact on our ever-changing nation and beloved state of Colorado. These courageous individuals have confronted racism, pioneered fights against discrimination, celebrated deep-rooted victories that transformed our society, and continue to inspire liberation. Some have fought their battles and paved the way for the next generation of kickass changemakers, while others’ fight for justice continues. Their visions and hope for a just, more diverse, and accepting society have yet to come to fruition; the torch has now been passed on to us.
Crunk Intersectionalities will be on display at The Center on Colfax from February 4 through March 23, 2025.
Credits
This exhibit is brought to you by The Center on Colfax’s West of 50 program and the Parable of the Sower Healing Center.
