Green Bay museum debuts first-of-its-kind LGBTQ+ history exhibition
‘Telling Our Stories’ is now open at the Neville Public Museum, and offers a first-of-its-kind look at history of LGBTQ+ life in northeast Wisconsin
GREEN BAY – Wayne Thiele walked the gallery alongside his granddaughter, his jewelry of two gemstone earrings a far cry from his days of opulence, when he strutted stages in hand-sown sequined gowns. It’s been years since he’s answered to his drag name Elsie Bovine, but he still marvels at the mention of her name.
At 75, the former Green Bay queen has no plans of going on any reunion tours, but Elsie Bovine’s gowns, crowns and jewels are on full display at the new Neville Public Museum exhibition “Telling Our Stories: LGBTQ+ Voices of Northeast Wisconsin.” Her belongings tell so many stories, like the time she kissed a llama for a photoshoot and got her heels stuck in farm muck, or the time she raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for AIDS relief right here in Green Bay. They make up the tapestry of northeast Wisconsin’s rich LGBTQ+ history, one the Neville has been eager to flaunt for nearly three years.
The museum’s doors opened to the public Thursday evening, revealing oral histories spanning decades, objects memorializing touchstone moments like queer weddings and memorable drag shows, and doors on which LGBTQ+ youths painted messages of hope, resilience and wishes for the future.
It’s an exhibition that colorfully debunks the idea that LGBTQ+ people are new to northeast Wisconsin. Their lives, both the hidden and visible, have been part of the history for hundreds of years, long before the Stonewall uprising — a series of protests between police and members of the LGBTQ+ in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1969 — a point executive director Beth Kowalski made in her opening remarks Thursday.
“Archives are spaces that bridge memory and social justice, encourage engagement, and allow hidden stories and histories to be shared and celebrated,” Kowalski said.
Thiele was just one of the roughly 50 voices captured by University of Wisconsin-Green Bay archives director Deb Anderson for the collections project, “Our Voices,” which Kowalski said was the catalyst for the Neville exhibition. Quotes from the archives project cover the museum walls and offer glimpses into coming out journeys, the AIDS crisis, internal struggles, politics and, importantly, queer joy.
“It’s such a powerful way of seeing history because it’s not stored in the dusty archives. It’s available for everybody,” Anderson said.
Anderson said the community coming together is what makes this such a powerful exhibition. It’s one thing to record someone’s oral history and store it away in the public record, but it’s another to watch somebody weep over a quote on the wall because some part of them was finally validated.
The stories highlight the complex feelings of living in the region at an inflection point, where age-old debates about the rights of LGBTQ+ people have ignited anew in state capitols across the United States. It’s a pain point that looms over the exhibition, even as strides have been made to acknowledge and accept the LGBTQ+ community.
“I hope (museum-goers) get an appreciation for people who have different lived experiences,” said Rachel Maes, one of the 15 members of the Neville community meeting who met regularly to make this exhibition happen. “I hope they see the humanity, that there are people who love vibrantly, hurt vividly and that the exhibit instills a sense of empathy.”
E.J. Miller Larson, a member of the Oneida Nation of Green Bay and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, created the artwork across the gallery over the course of a couple months. It was important for them to create a diverse space spanning genders, race, ethnicities and abilities.
“That’s a big part of the art I do. I’ve never personally felt represented in a lot of the art that I’ve seen, so I’m trying to make a little dent in that for other people too,” they said. “I like to make art so I can see myself and I like to include as many different types of bodies and different backgrounds as I can.”
Digital maps are one of the more innovative ways the Neville has contained the good, bad and ugly. Museum-goers have the ability to click through side-by-side screens of LGBTQ+ events that have happened prior to Stonewall and after Stonewall at the national, state and local level. It extends from more than a hundred years ago to 2023, curator James Peth said, but because it is a living document, news will continue to update.
The old queer haunts of northeast Wisconsin — the bars, nightclubs and drag shows — also give the exhibition character. A flyer from the Argonauts of Wisconsin is both a flyer for Green Bay’s queer social club and an important moment in Green Bay’s history, as it represents the very first gay organization in the state. A Miss Guernsey sash is a cow-printed cloth, but it’s also what Elsie Bovine draped over drag queen winners in the early 1990s at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
The beauty pageant themed to cows was, of course, a joke, Thiele said, but it was necessary levity during an unspeakable plague. They raised money to help their friends forge through the medical expenses associated with HIV and AIDS treatment.
Thiele was reminded, wandering the gallery, of all the friends he lost to AIDS, including his best friend.
“It’s bringing up memories I haven’t thought of in years, so many of them about AIDS,” Thiele said. “There’s a lot of sadness, yes, but it’s bringing up so much of the good stuff too. We’ve had so much fun.”
“Telling Our Stories: LGBTQ+ Voices of Northeastern Wisconsin” will be on display through Nov. 3.
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