Future American LGBTQ+ Museum in Manhattan to celebrate diversity and teach inclusion

Whether it be through telling the story of the gay rights movement, the emergence of drag ball culture and beyond, the American LGBTQ+ Museum hopes to be a locus where visitors can grasp queer people's journey in this country when it opens in Manhattan in a few years.

The American LGBTQ+ Museum is expected to open in October 2027 in a new wing of The New York Historical — formerly called the New-York Historical Society.

The museum, which will be housed on the building's fourth floor, will have 4,000 square feet of gallery space, along with other areas such as classrooms. It will also be a training ground for queer activists.

With this physical location, the American LGBTQ+ Museum hopes to provide ongoing education about the contributions of the LGBTQ+ community to this country, advocates and museum officials say. But its development comes as the climate toward people within the LGBTQ+ community is being challenged in various spheres, including through specific book bans of works featuring gay characters and anti-transgender legislation.

Nearly 25 states have put into place laws or policies restricting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, according to KFF — an organization that researches health policy.

More than 10 states have laws that block transgender females from public school bathrooms and sometimes restrooms at other government facilities, The Associated Press reported in late November.

On Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, museum officials, advocates, artists and others pushed back against those sentiments at the museum's groundbreaking ceremony.

"To everyone — all citizens of New York, all visitors to this great city, should come to this gathering place and understand a part of our history that shows that New York State is not just the first place … that was the home of the precursor the NAACP. We also say we are the birthplace of the LGBTQ+ movement," Hochul said.

Richard Burns, the museum's board chair, said anti-LGBTQ+ attacks seek to "drive us back into the closets and pretend we don't exist."

"And our job is to tell our stories, the stories of all our LGBTQ+ queer people in all of our variety, to celebrate and preserve our history so that we can have a future," Burns told the audience at The New York Historical.

The museum has been years in the making, said Ben Garcia, the museum's executive director. In 2017, several LGBTQ+ advocates conceived of a place to tell the community's story and started working to bring it to fruition.

From there, the museum partnered with The New York Historical to share the building. The new wing also will be used for other initiatives, including the Academy for American Democracy, a dayslong educational program for sixth graders, The New York Historical said.

The Tang Wing for American Democracy is expected to cost $175 million, the organization said. The project received $75 million from New York City, the state and the federal government. The remainder was raised privately.

Lisa Dresner, writing studies and rhetoric associate professor and director of Hofstra University's LGBTQ+ Studies program, said that having a "physical monument to LGBTQ+" life and their contributions can serve as counterprogramming in the face of transphobic and homophobic legislation.

"It's hard to dehumanize people when you've learned more about them," she said.

The core exhibit of the museum will be an introductory history of queer people on this land, including certain Indigenous understandings of queerness, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and activism in the 20th century.

There also will be a display looking at drag and ballroom and possibly another looking at how clothing expresses part of gender.

In all, Garcia said, the goal is to balance stories of activism and hardship with joy and resilience.

"We're going to do sort of the full emotional spectrum," Garcia said. "Go to those places of real sorrow and anger … to those places of incredible joy."

Juli Grey-Owens, who is transgender and the executive director of Gender Equality New York Inc., said that the museum could be a place where trans people can see positive representation.

Grey-Owens said the public often receives incorrect information about transgender people, leading to a violent response to the community. Transgender people then often live in hiding, fearful of the potential loss of a job or housing.

The museum, she said, can help break the cycle. 

"It will allow members of the public who maybe have an open mind or have questions to be able to go there and maybe get a better understanding of who we are," she said.

Devon Zappasodi, director of PFY — which provides support for LGBTQ+ people and is part of the Long Island Crisis Center — hopes the museum will be a “beacon of hope, reminding everybody that love and inclusivity triumphs over hate and severance and ignorance.”

By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith

tiffany.cusaac-smith@newsday.com@T_Cusaac

Education: Howard University 

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith came to Newsday in 2023 after being a race and history reporter at USA TODAY, where she wrote enterprise and spot articles examining how the past shapes the present. Previously, she worked as the race and justice reporter at the USA TODAY Network of New York, covering issues such as criminal justice reform, housing, environmental justice, health care and politics. At The Journal News/lohud.com in Westchester County, she covered Yonkers, the state's third-largest city. She also worked at The Associated Press in Atlanta.

Honors and Awards: Criminal justice reporting fellowship with the National Press Foundation;  New York News Publishers Association award for distinguished investigative reporting;  Contributed reporting for Best of Gannett honor; Member of Table Stakes, a program funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and managed by the American Press Institute to transform local news.