Library president Paul LeClerc, center, presents LGBT @ NYPL committee chairmen Hermes Mallea, left, and Carey Maloney with a framed poster of the Library’s 1994 exhibit Becoming Visible. Below: Guests view treasures from the New York Public Library’s LGBT holdings during an April gala. Photos:Mary Hilliard.
Meet Rita Fisher, the 84-year-old Brooklyn native who raised nearly half a million bucks during the AIDS Walk.
Mark your calendars now for HOP’s Pride events the last week of June. Here’s the rundown.
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By Dustin Fitzharris
Friday, April 25, 2008
The New York Public Library has received more than $500,000 for a new project called LGBT @ NYPL that will expand, enhance and digitize the library’s LGBT collection.
Carey Maloney can attest to what a diverse collection it is. At the debut fundraising event for the project, Jason Bauman, a member of the library’s LGBT committee, pulled an item from the archives to show Maloney.
It was a poster from The Saint, an East Village disco popular in the 1980s.
Not just any poster. This one advertised the very party at which Maloney met Hermes Mallea, the man who become his partner in life and business—they’re behind architecture and design firm M (Group).
Whether coincidence or kismet, Maloney and Mallea are now spearheading the LGBT @ NYPL project, which was officially launched last month with a gala at the library—attendees included honorary co-chairmen playwright Tony Kushner (Pulitzer Prize winner for “Angels in America”) and author Edmund White (“A Boy’s Own Story”) along with committee ambassador and gay historian Martin Duberman.
Two years ago, Maloney and Mallea presented NYPL president Paul LeClerc with the idea of starting a committee to raise funds for the LGBT collections. The couple has been involved with the library for 20 years, and Mallea said it just made sense to take on the project, calling New York “the center of the LGBT universe.”
“This is sadly a rare example of a major international academic institution supporting—visibly and with pleasure—the LGBT community,” Maloney said. “For a change we did not have to create our own organization.”
Their idea worked. Time Warner pledged $300,000 to the collections. MAC AIDS Fund donated $150,000 and Estée Lauder contributed $30,000. In addition, 41 individual members added to the funds by giving gifts that totaled more than $100,000.
The Library contains at least 50,000 LGBT volumes and more 300 archival collections, including the archives of key LGBT activists and activist organizations, such as Gay Activists Alliance and Mattachine Society of New York. There are also many AIDS-related papers and archives. The MAC AIDS Fund donation will bring HIV/AIDS issues to broader public attention by providing wider access to these HIV/AIDS resources. Included in the collection are the ACT UP Records, People with AIDS Coalition Records, the Day without Art Collection, the Tony Davis Papers and the David B. Feinberg Papers.
Additionally, the library holds the archives of LGBT artists and cultural figures such as Walt Whitman and Virginia Woolf.
Baumann, who also serves as a special assistant to the director of the NYPL, couldn’t be happier about having the finances to share this collection with everyone around the world.
“We’re putting a new face on something that’s been here a long time,” Baumann said.
Baumann explained that there have been LGBT collections throughout the NYPL’s four research libraries, as well as the 87 branches, for many years. However, with everything carefully stored and some items off limits to the public—at least to those who couldn’t show proof they were conducting research—access wasn’t readily available. With the new funding, there is now a way.
Baumann launched a blog on April 3 that will continuously highlight materials in the library’s LGBT collections. The collections, which have pieces that date as far as 1493, are being digitized and can now be viewed online.
Maloney sees the blog as a practical and valuable resource for the public.
“The library is obsessed with disseminating the information it collects and protects,” Maloney said. “The World Wide Web is the route, and Jason’s blog—with teen links, senior links, health information and digital library images—is engaging and expands the library’s services. We hope it will be the site to go to.”
So with some money raised and digitization well under way, what is the next step for the LGBT collections at the NYPL?
“The money raised to date is just the start,” Maloney said. “To catalog the materials on hand, which is over 8,000 linear feet of boxes of materials, and to digitize this for the web and to endow the department with a permanent staff will cost $7 million.”
Mallea estimates it’ll take five years to achieve that goal.
“We envision LGBT @ NYPL to become—more than it already is—the obvious destination for great archives and donations of materials from LGBT scholars, writers and artists.”
To get the latest information on the LGBT @ NYPL project, upcoming events and to view the digital achieves, visit the blog at http://lgbt.nypl.org/
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