James Bidgood was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1933, at the height of the Depression. From the time of his arrival in New York at 18 years old, he immersed himself in the underground worlds of drag, hustling, and pornography. In the 1950s, Bidgood was a drag queen and set and lighting designer at the legendary New York nightclub Club 82. He attended Parsons School of Design, and went on to design elaborate costumes for society balls, among other jobs that would come to inform his art. In the 19… more

For over 40 years, Mariette Pathy Allen has been documenting the spectrum of gender expression. Pathy Allen’s archive consists of thousands of photographs, countless interview transcripts, personal correspondence, and materials related to a career dedicated to supporting and documenting trans and gender-variant communities. Work dating from the late 1970s through the early 2000s is the main focus of this exhibition. The selection largely highlights a time before the internet, when often ha… more