As a record number of Americans identify as LGBTQ, museums focused on queer history and culture play a pivotal role for the LGBTQ community, which has faced historical erasure after decades of marginalization and discrimination that still continue today. It wasn't until the mid-20th century that queer activists stepped up to build their own archives, at first informally, by gathering artifacts like journals, meeting notes and protest banners, and then in more formal collections like the GLBT Historical Society, founded in 2011. The GLBT Historical Society is the only stand-alone museum in the country dedicated solely to LGBTQ history and culture. In the first photo, the segment of one of the original rainbow flags created for San Francisco Gay Freedom Day 1978 rests in its case at the GLBT Historical Society Museum. In 2024, the American LGBTQ+ Museum is set to open in New York City in 2024. Amari McGee, an activist and consultant, has an ambitious goal for 2022: visiting every LGBTQ museum or relevant exhibit in the United States. He's hoping to educate himself on the history and culture of a community he's a part of as a transgender man, and intends to use the knowledge he gains to improve the services he can provide to others. Click our link in bio to read more about the ways archives and exhibits are being curated to showcase more LGBTQ history and how “decades of work and activism and archiving practice by queer people” are now coming to fruition.