The New York Historical’s (formerly The New-York Historical Society) just-opened exhibition, “The Gay Harlem Renaissance,” (on view until Mar. 8, 2026), is an overdue exploration of Early 20th-century Black LGBTQ+ life and attainment in the African American cultural capital.
It commemorates the centennial of The New Negro — the landmark 1925 Survey Graphic Magazine anthology edited and turned into a book by Howard University philosophy professor, Alain Leroy Locke. Through a thoughtfully curated collection of 200 artifacts, exemplary of the exuberance of much queer creativity, the show relates what made this seminal period, in the words of scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., “as gay as it was Black…”
During the opening preview, Dr. Louise Mirrer, the museum’s president & CEO, declared, “This exhibition, like all of our exhibitions at The New York Historical, tells the story not simply of diverse Americans, but of how American it is to be diverse.” Her remarks preceded blues stylings by singer Carla Stewart, performing deliberately updated interpretations of Bessie Smith, Cole Porter, and others who figured in “The Gay Harlem Renaissance,” arranged by band leader and pianist Gary Mitchell Jr., who conducted John Feliciano on bass, drummer Cristián Tamblay, and Devon Meddock on trumpet. This prelude to dancing, and a reception-supper upstairs, prompted Monica Miller, (chair and professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University), fresh from overseeing her triumphant “Superfine, Defining Black Style,” (just finishing at the Met), to remark: “These songs are sung … in a badass style, creating a wonderful tension between what they are revealing and what they are concealing.”
Michael Henry Adams photos
Allison Robinson, Associate Curator of History Exhibitions & Lead Curator of Gay Harlem Renaissance 
A glamorous mid 1920’s evening coat made from pailletted antique Cashmir shawls with a fur collar for A’Lelia Walker, the Joy Goddess of the Harlem Renaissance,’who presided majestically over the ‘Dark Tower’ party palace 
Photographic blowups, such as this depiction of bibliophile L. S. Alexander Gumby in his upper Fifth Avenue book studio, a celebrated rendezvous of the Gay Harlem Renaissance, help to dramatize the exhibition. Stricken when Great Depression losses suffered by his supportive stockbroker lover, meant he had to leave this nurturing environment, Gumby had to be hospitalized for several years. In due course, he recovered. Taking a waiter’s job at Columbia, he restored and refined his scrapbook collection and even oversaw its safekeeping, in the Butler Library rare book room 
Modern replica of costume worn by Bonnie Clark to win the prize for best dressed at the 1932 Hamilton Lodge Odd Fellows Masquerade and Civic Ball held, as customary, at the Rockland Palace. 
Gladys Bently, who started on Jungle Alley and stared at the Ubangi Club, before moving to Midtown, was notorious for adding risqué lyrics to the popular songs she sang and wearing men’s formalwear 
In 1996, my friend, photography enthusiasts Walter Nagel (Bayard Rustin’s life partner), meeting Marvin Smith for the first time, asked to photograph us together. Illustrative of the friendships I cultivated to get Queer elders to confide in me, Walter’s image is included at the close of Gay Harlem Renaissance 
Dr. David Levering Lewis, whose innovative book that did so much to uncover the LGBTQ+ contribution to Harlem’s Renaissance, When Harlem was in Vogue is exhibited in the show, flanked by Dr. Monica Miller, Chair and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University and curator of the Met museum’s show, Superfine, Defining Black Style, and City College architecture professor Jerome Haferd 
Harlem Gynecologist Dr. Joy Wellington. Dr. Wellington’s son is the stylish entertainer Dandy Wellington 
Alaine Leroy Locke stares and smokes from a 1930’s oil portrait next to an enlargement of the cover of the 1925 issue of the magazine Survey Graphic he edited and turned into a book. It portrays the renowned African American tenor Roland Hayes 
Columnist William “Bill” C. Chase 1932 cartoon for the New York Amsterdam News portraying Bonnie Clark and the other top winners of the Hamilton Lodge Odd Fellows Masquerade and Civic Ball. Once the balls ceased in 1938, in 1947 Clark with Phil Black and Alan Marshall formed the Funmakers, who resumed the festive fundraiser
Augmented by an interactive map of Harlem nightspots from long ago, the colorful and cleverly designed exhibit also features facsimiles of costumes and hats worn by jazz age entertainers one is welcome to try on. Stepping in front of an ancient microphone, appropriately dressed, blurring the strict demarcation between past and present, gallery visitors can strike a pose to become a part of history, emulating those on view from behind the glass cases.
Along the way, displays introduce a rich variety of historical luminaries, including writer Wallace Thurman, singer Ethel Waters, sculptor Richmond Barthé, poet Countee Cullen, artist Richard Bruce Nugent, and many others.
Some of these Harlem heroes, like Langston Hughes, are still well remembered. Before “The Gay Harlem Renaissance,” however, surely relatively few would have been aware of their queer identity. Others are obscure indeed. Who recalls the statuesque singer, Gladys Bentley? Ninety years ago, dressed in men’s formal evening clothes (white, instead of black), notorious for adding risqué lyrics to the popular songs she sang, Bentley was the toast of New York’s cabaret circuit.
Someone else completely forgotten is Bonnie Clark. Perennially, at the end of February, attending the Hamilton Lodge no. 710 Grand United Order of Odd Fellows Masquerade and Civic Ball, she scored first prize ($30-50.00). Hilariously, “her” 1936 frock and outlandishly plumed tiara have been recreated. It’s accompanied by a cartoon drawn by Bill Chase (notoriously gay) from the Amsterdam News. When they stopped in 1938, these spectacles, known colloquially in Harlem as the ‘Faries’ or the ‘Faggots’ ball, had been going on for nearly a century, attracting integrated participants as numerous as 7,000. Even celebrities, many of whom were secretly Queer, attended as well as Queers eager for the one event and one night where they could wear clothes of the opposite sex and dance and flirt with the same sex, legally. The crowd who came to gawk included Cecil Beaton (Queer) the English photographer, actress Tallulah Bankhead (bi), poet and novelist Miss Dorothy West (Queer), actress Miss Blanche Dunn (bi), sculptor and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (bi), famed painter Aaron Douglas (straight), manager and club MC Lloyd Thomas (bi), performer Taylor Gordon (curious), chior director Hall Johnson (Queer), French teacher Harold Jackman (Queer, but he had a daughter with a White woman), music coach Caska Bonds (Queer), singer and pianist Carroll Boyd (Queer), nightclub singer Jimmie Daniels (Queer), procurer Clinton Moore (Queer), cartoonist Charles Alston (straight), tenor Embry Bonner (bi), society performer Joseph Coleman (Queer), cartoonist and Amsterdam columnist William C. Chase (Queer), actor Philander Thomas (Queer), socialite Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr. (Queer), tailor, and procurer Eddie Manchester (Queer).
Reporting on 1929’s ball, Geraldyn Dismond (later Gerri Major), observed, “The greatest joy in life is to be able to express one’s inner self. Of course, a costume ball can be a very tame thing, but when all the exquisitely gowned women on the floor are men and a number of the smartest men are women, and then we have something over which to thrill and grow round-eyed. … Never no wells of loneliness in Harlem…”
Abandoned by the Odd Fellows, shut in anticipation of the 1939 World’s Fair, this spellbinding phenomenon was relaunched in 1947. Professional female impersonator Phil Black, Bonnie Clark, and Harlem bartender Alan Marshall (who worked at Andre’s into the 1990s), previously involved in the Hamilton Lodge ball, called themselves the Funmakers. Eventually, they moved their big Thanksgiving week fundraiser to the Marc Ballroom on Union Square.
“The Gay Harlem Renaissance shows that Black LGBTQ+ life was far more visible, accepted, and integrated into the daily life of 1920s Harlem than most people imagine,” says George Chauncey, the exhibition’s chief historian, a Columbia history professor who is the author of “Gay New York, 1890-1940.”
As one of 10 scholar-consultants for “The Gay Harlem Renaissance,” I’ve been fascinated by the history of a time and place that so specifically represents who I am, since I was an undergraduate in Ohio. The fable of that epoch so strongly resonated with me that after I moved here, any elder I came across was inevitably questioned about what I came to term, ‘Homo Harlem.’ “One day I will write a book!” I told Raul Abdul, a masterful commentator on art and culture for the Amsterdam News. He had been Langston Hughes’ secretary and confided in me how they had been intimate. Writing about George Chauncey’s Gay New York in 1998, he also wrote of me:
“The rich history of gay lifestyle in Harlem is being documented by a wonderful young African American writer, Michael Adams. He has uncovered a treasure chest of material and I hope we will all be ready to accept his revelations when his book comes out.”
Introducing “The Gay Harlem Renaissance” are Great Migration scenes painted by Malvin Gray Johnson. Captions relate how he went on to work in tandem with his lover, painter Earle Richardson, on a 1934 WPA-sponsored mural for the 135th Street Public Library, entitled “Negro Achievement.” Because 38-year-old Johnson died suddenly, followed a year later by 23-year-old Richardson, the lost project was never completed.
I asked George why he had failed to mention that, as distraught as Juliet was losing Romeo, when he lost Johnson, Richardson had leaped from his fourth-floor window at 251 West 111th, he said: “We decided not to begin the exhibit with a suicide. Their relationship and work were the important things to emphasize.”
The great thing about this judgment and about “The Gay Harlem Renaissance” more generally is that it is a much-anticipated, unique undertaking, uncovering history that’s been suppressed and hidden before. Most definitely, unavoidably, it inspires, yet more to come.
For more information, visit nyhistory.org.