SF to Buy New Home for GLBT Museum, Preserving Century of LGBTQ History

After decades of shuffling between temporary locations, the nation’s first museum dedicated to LGBT culture and history will have a new home, Mayor London Breed announced Thursday.

San Francisco plans to purchase a spacious 14,640-square-foot lot at 2280 Market St. to serve as the new GLBT Historical Society Museum and Archives site.

“It’s been a labor of love for so many people working together for decades,” said Roberto Ordeñana, the executive director of the GLBT Historical Society, the nonprofit that stewards the museum.

Almost 20 years ago, the GLBT Historical Society created a storefront museum on 18th Street in the Castro, where the museum is currently housed.

The museum’s collection, which draws from a vast archive spanning a century of local LGBTQ history and activism, includes priceless cultural artifacts, including remnants of the original rainbow pride flag, first flown in 1978. The museum also cares for the bloodstained suit worn by Supervisor Harvey Milk, who represented the Castro, when he was assassinated in 1978.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said he’s welcomed foreign dignitaries to the 1,600-square-foot site, including the Queen of the Netherlands.

“It is the place where people come to learn about the queer history of the Castro and in San Francisco,” Mandelman said. “It’s been great, but it is small, and it has never been understood to be the permanent home for the [GLBT] historical society.

Mandelman credits Breed, whose office committed $12.5 million for the acquisition in 2021, and state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who helped secure an additional $5.5 million in state funding, for making the new site a reality.

Wiener said the effort to establish the museum will help educate future generations about the community’s history.

“We need to understand where we came from,” Wiener said. “There are people who came before us, people who fought, who struggled, who died, and who built the movement and built the community.”

On Tuesday, Breed and Mandelman will introduce legislation before the Board of Supervisors to officially purchase the Upper Market space.

Once the supervisors approve the agreement, the city will enter into a lease agreement with the GLBT Historical Society and the Community Arts Stabilization Trust, which works to secure affordable spaces for nonprofit arts and culture organizations.

Ordeñana said the museum will uplift LGBTQ history while also shining a light on the equality struggles that still remain. He said this means reckoning with the community’s shortcomings, including the historical exclusion of people of color, transgender people and women.

“Having an organization that prioritizes a strong racial and gender equity framework and the ability to lift up those stories from the communities that are most impacted by intersecting oppression has been incredibly important for us,” Ordeñana said.

This means exploring a name change for the new museum, Ordeñana said, so that the diverse communities of San Francisco may see themselves more accurately reflected.

Ordeñana knows firsthand that life in San Francisco “isn’t always easy” for gay and trans people. A San Francisco native, he was born to parents who immigrated from Central America. It wasn’t until he got involved with arts, culture and HIV/AIDS prevention work that he found his sense of community.

On Friday, city and state officials, the GLBT Historical Society and community members celebrated at the proposed museum site with a commemoration ceremony and a performance by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.

“This is an incredibly proud moment for me as someone who was born and raised here to be able to support the stewardship of this incredible collection,” Ordeñana said. “It’s vital for San Francisco to continue being that beacon of hope for the entire world to really understand both the struggles and the resilience of our community.”