Founded in 1985, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of LGBTQ public history. We operate the nation’s first museum of LGBT History and Culture, located in the heart of San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, and our Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives and Research Center, open to researchers in the Mid-Market district.
OUR IMPACT
AT THE MUSEUM
9,500+ museum visitors, from 49 countries
71 group tours, including from 63 educational institutions
27 artists & speakers engaged
Dozens of exhibitions, touring partnerships & public events
800 volunteer hours contributed
AT THE ARCHIVE
Hundreds of researchers, historians, and artists visited our archives
Dozens of new archival accessions were added to our collections
Thousands of new historic photographs and documents were digitized
750+ questions answered by email & phone
ACROSS THE WORLD
Hundreds of researchers, historians, and artists visited our archives
Dozens of new archival accessions were added to our collections
Thousands of new historic photographs and documents were digitized
750+ questions answered by email & phone
DEAR FRIENDS,
This past year, we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the GLBT Historical Society's founding, and while we are immensely proud of the decades of LGBTQ+ history we have preserved and shared, it has never been clearer how profoundly necessary this work remains. Pride flags were removed from Stonewall. Transgender, nonbinary, and immigrant community members face escalating attacks on their rights, their dignity, and their lives. In this moment, our work is an act of resistance. It is vital that we remain committed and united in defending the history, stories, and voices of the LGBTQ+ community.
In 2025, we proudly joined with eight co-plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging executive orders designed to erase transgender and gender-expansive people from public life. We are relieved to have won a preliminary injunction with expert representation by Lambda Legal, and remain committed to continuing this fight in the weeks, months, and years to come.
The road ahead will be challenging. We will face continued rollbacks in federal funding and institutional support for our community. Nonetheless, we continue the work of unapologetically sharing our stories with tens of thousands of people from across the globe, while also preparing for our historic move to 2280 Market Street. In our new, permanent, state-of-the-art home in the Castro, visitors will have expanded access to our vast collections and programming, and we will carry on our mission of making the LGBTQ+ community's rich, dynamic history and culture accessible to all.
For forty years, we have understood that visibility is not incidental to survival — it is essential to it. We remain committed to upholding that truth and to uplifting these stories, for the next forty years and beyond.
With gratitude, for every member, visitor, researcher, staff member, volunteer, community member, and ally who make this work possible,
Roberto Ordeñana
Executive Director
Ani Rivera
Board Co-Chair
Jaime Santos
Board Co-Chair
SPOTLIGHTS
More than 400 community members, allies, sponsors, and supporters gathered at the Westin St. Francis in October 2025 to celebrate 40 years of the GLBT Historical Society — and made history in the process — hosting the largest and most successful gala in our history, raising over $355,000 in support of our mission.
The evening honored two artists whose work embodies the power of visibility and fearless storytelling: Sean Dorsey, the nation's first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer, and Cheryl Dunye, the first out Black lesbian to direct a feature film.
It is up to us to document our lives, our movements for liberation, our art, our loves. To preserve this history and then share it, and share it again, to make sure it stays alive.
- SEAN DORSEY
Trans Bay — KQED Arts & Culture
KQED Arts & Culture published “Trans Bay: A History of San Francisco's Gender-Diverse Community”, a landmark multi-part series spotlighting transgender and gender-diverse artists and activists from the 1890s to today. The series drew extensively from the Society’s collections, with support from historian and former GLBT Historical Society Executive Director Susan Stryker, as well as Society archivist Devin McGeehan Muchmore.
SALLY! At the Roxie
In celebration of 2025’s Lesbian Visibility Week, the Society partnered with the Roxie Theater and the Bay Area Lesbian Archives to screen Sally!, a documentary chronicling the life and legacy of Sally Gearhart — one of second-wave feminism's most beloved icons, who fought for queer rights alongside Harvey Milk before being largely forgotten by the historical record. The panel that followed discussed the importance of archiving lesbian lives, triumphs, and activism.
IT’S YOUR HISTORY: EXPLORE THE DIGITAL ARCHIVE
With so many new materials being added to our digital collections, there’s no better time to explore the archive yourself. Visit our explore page, and discover your history today.
ON THE WORLD STAGE
Objects from our collections traveled the globe in 2025 — featured in exhibitions at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Warsaw Queer Museum, and Superfine: Tailoring Black Style at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among many others.
IN the archive
THE ARCHIVES
We continued our work of preserving and expanding access to the histories in our care.
Among the physical collections accessioned this year are the papers of Heklina — legendary drag performer, event producer, and founder of T-Shack and Oasis — and the papers of Kris Kovick, lesbian cartoonist, writer, performance artist, and activist whose work was central to San Francisco's queer cultural scene throughout the 1990s.
Left: Photo of a large group of people at the Baybrick Inn. The Baybrick Inn was a woman and lesbian-centered bar, nightclub, restaurant, and hotel that operated from 1982-1987 in San Francisco, CA. Baybrick Inn Records, GLBT Historical Society.
Digital Transgender Archive Partnership
The Victoria Fernandez/Vicki Starr Collection is now available to researchers: a Puerto Rican trans woman who performed as Vicki Starr and danced in San Francisco's topless clubs in the 1960s, she used photography to express her gender and personality from the 1950s to the 1980s — from photobooth strips to Polaroids, capturing herself alongside lovers and friends from the queer community. Many more collections to follow in 2026 from this incredible partnership.
New digital collections were added, including materials from Esta Noche — a popular gathering space for queer Latine community members — as well as records from the Baybrick Inn. Meanwhile our reading room welcomed hundreds of researchers throughout the year.
Left: Flyer for an After-Hours Dance Party held at Esta Noche in San Francisco, CA. San Francisco LGBT Business Ephemera Collection, GLBT Historical Society
The Society deepened its partnership with the Digital Transgender Archive, whose launch of a new West Coast branch created an opportunity to expand access to materials documenting transgender histories. Working closely with DTA staff, our archivists identified collections for digitization — a methodical process of scanning and metadata creation that is already yielding results.
“What's incredibly special about the Historical Society archive is that it doesn't only collect from famous people. You can be anybody queer and have something valuable to contribute to historical narrative, and that's what history should be about. A community of folks coming together to create love and belonging within a society that is not always accepting.”
Amy Sueyoshi,
Former board member
AT THE MUSEUM
Éamon McGivern: A/History
The landscape of lesbian cartoons in the 1990s was small yet vibrant; full of passion, satire, self-deprecation, and deep-cutting political and social commentary. Publishing these cartoons in the early years of Curve Magazine (which was named Deneuve between 1991-1995) was a natural fit, aligning with the pivotal lesbian publication’s cheeky voice and journalistic integrity, and enhancing both the aesthetics of the pages and its witty content.
They comment on the content of articles, provide interesting layout design, and are occasionally stand-alone strips with their own views.
Right: Reference Photograph by Robert Pruzan. Playwright Anthony Bruno at a Mapplethorpe exhibition, San Francisco, 2024.
“It’s important to know our stories. It's powerful to know where you've been. We're not going to learn it anywhere else if we don't hold these stories for our own communities.”
-Éamon McGivern
I Live The Life I Love, Because I Love The Life I Live Gallery Photo
I Live the Life I Love, Because I Love the Life I Live
This exhibition celebrated Black, Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander trans and gender-nonconforming people — highlighting both performance and everyday expressions of identity, from studio portraits of gender impersonators at Finocchio's and the touring Jewel Box Revue, to candid photographs, activist materials, and self-portraits.
Two photographs of the same person. One shows Eddy — sculpted eyebrows, permed hair. The other shows Edwina — white dress, sequined shoes, miniature white piano.
Eddy & Edwina: Exhibition Spotlight
The photos may have been taken during the Pansy Craze, a brief period from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s when LGBTQ+ visibility in American popular culture briefly flourished. We will never know how Eddy and Edwina would have identified in a more open and accepting era. But here they are — seen, preserved, remembered.
“The exhibit presented 100 years of trans history depicting the universality and diversity of the trans experience. The unique lived experience of the GLBT History Museum’s diverse staff brought depth and insight to the exhibit that left visitors with a greater understanding and appreciation of Asian, Black, and Latinx trans lives and culture.”
- Ms. Bob Davis,
LLTA Founder & Exhibition Curator
2026
BY THE NUMBERS
Financial information is preliminary. For full and finalized financials, please visit glbthistory.org/reports.
MAKING HISTORY
THANK YOU to our community of donors, whose generosity makes our mission possible.
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Grants for the Arts
The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development
The Office of Economic and Workforce Development
The San Francisco Arts Commission
The San Francisco Office of Small Business
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The California State Library
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The National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission
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Al Larvick Conservation Fund
Creative Work Fund
The Council on Library and
Information Resources
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Anonymous Lesbian Donors
Daniel Bao
Wells Fargo Bank N.A.
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Bob Ross Foundation
Robert Holgate
David Kessler Estate
Lesbians for Good
Levi Strauss Foundation
Karen Merzenich & Ross Fubini
Snap
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Sasha Aickin
Anthropologie
Larry Brenner & Angelo Figone
John Caldwell & Zane Blaney
Benjamin Chavez Gilliam
Ron Conway Family
Tomlinson Holman &
Friederich Koenig
Horizons Foundation
Eugene Kaeck Estate
William F. Owen Jr. M.D.
Rachel Pokorny
Salesforce
Jason Seifer & Brian Ayer
Toad Hall
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The Academy
Tina Valentin Aguirre & Bill Jennings
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Amazon
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AutoErotica
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Bank of the West
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Mike Gorman Estate
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KLA
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Bill Levinger & Tracy Stiles
LinkedIn
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Daniel Lurie & Becca Prowda
Richard Lynch, Frank Steil & Sam Jennings
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San Francisco Giants Baseball Club LLC
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US Bank
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