New Brooklyn Museum Exhibit Explores the Cultural Memory of Stonewall

It began as just another Friday night at the Stonewall Inn, a popular New York gay bar. The raid by the NYPD Public Morals Squad in the early hours of June 28, 1969, would have been routine, too—except this time, tired of harassment, the bar’s patrons fought back. The unplanned uprising launched the gay rights movement, but 50 years later, “Stonewall is one of those events that’s both remembered and misremembered,” says Carmen Hermo, co-curator of “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow” at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition looks at Stonewall’s legacy through the work of LGBTQ artists born after 1969. From reverent tributes to that night’s forgotten trans heroines to posters parodying the prejudice that sexual and gender minorities still face, these artists pick at the threads of an unfinished historical narrative. “It’s a moment of celebration, but also of reflection,” says Felipe Baeza, whose mixed-media image (below) honors queer love in times of struggle. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

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Amy Crawford is a Michigan-based freelance journalist writing about cities, science, the environment, art and education. A longtime Smithsonian contributor, her work also appears in CityLab and the Boston Globe.