Welcome new friends!

Thanks so much for saying hi to us at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair! We were ecstatic to meet so many new faces and spread the word about the archive. If you met us there, you’ve probably heard our spiel about being the largest LGBTQ+ archive in the world, and you may have heard about our mission to collect, preserve, and make accessible LGBTQ+ historical materials while supporting new scholarship and public awareness of queer histories. We know many of you were eager to learn about how you can visit — for those interested in conducting research, please reference a step by step guide from our website. While our books and periodicals are searchable on the USC Libraries website, you can explore our archival holdings through Online Archive of California.

And for those of you who are interested in coming to see the space, you’re in luck, we’ve got a double-whammy this summer with two new shows opening June 13th: Fairy Prince, a solo show by ONE Archives artist-in-residence Halo Starling, and The Space We Take: Portraits from the Archive. Join us for an opening reception celebrating both shows from 6 - 9 pm on June 13th.

Save the date for Friday, June 13th!

The Space We Take: Portraits from the Archive

The Space We Take brings together a selection of portraits from the ONE Archives collection across a range of media, with many of them on view for the first time. From photography to intaglio prints and oil painting to assemblage, these works speak to the human instinct to depict ourselves and others as well as the desire to see ourselves in others. This show celebrates the diversity and range in artist and sitter alike and serves as a reminder of both our strength as a community and our historical longevity. 

We are proud to exhibit a selection of recent donations, including paintings by James Huber and Michael Hossner by Lee Draper, prints from the Fairoaks Project by Gary Freeman and Nick Macierz, and Arthur Tress photography donated by the Vein Family. The exhibition also includes works by Eve Fowler, Amos Badertscher, Nancy Rosenblum, Laura Aguilar, Logan Beckett, Marc Geller, Simon Gad, Mundo Meza, and Ricardo Reyes, among others. 

Read more about The Space We Take: Portraits from the Archive on our website. 

Fairy Prince

Fairy Prince will present a variety of new work by ONE artist-in-residence Halo Starling based on his research surrounding the Radical Faeries, particularly the New York Radical Faeries Collection and the Harry Hay Papers at the ONE Archives at USC. The radical faeries are a loosely affiliated worldwide network and counter-cultural movement seeking to redefine queer consciousness through secular spirituality and ecology. Rejecting hetero-imitation, the Radical Faerie movement began during the 1970s sexual revolution among gay men in the US and is now a thriving LGBTQ+ community with a strong trans contingent.

Fairy Prince will explore the concept of sanctuary, a central tenet of the radical faeries. The exhibition space will become a temporary autonomous zone of sorts, a sanctuary, within which visitors can enter “faerie space” and explore archival objects alongside new cyanotypes, collage, and a film installation.

Click here to read more about Halo Starling and Fairy Prince.

See you soon!