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WHEN ONE ONE MAGAZINE published its first issue in January 1953, it became the first widely distributed gay publication in the United States. Created by One Inc., the gay rights organization founded the year before, the pioneering magazine is celebrating its trailblazing pages and its influential 14-year run with a new exhibit in Los Angeles.
Starting Sunday at the Advocate & Gochis Galleries at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, "ONE Magazine at Seventy" offers visitors a chance to dig into the brainchild of writer Jim Kepner and activist W. Dorr Legg. The exhibit kicks off the inaugural "Circa: Queer Histories Festival," a monthlong celebration of the seven decades of the organization that first founded the storied magazine.
Throughout October, otherwise known as LGBT History Month, and taking place all over the Greater Los Angeles area, Circa will be hosting readings such as "HIV/AIDS: A Literary History" in West Hollywood, panel conversations like "Unapologetically Whole: Queer Elders of Color Speak Out" in Santa Monica, exhibitions such as "Queer Futurism: Transcendence in Time" in the San Gabriel Valley, and film screenings, including of Oat Montien's "Patpong Narcissus," at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Echo Park.
For Tony Valenzuela, executive director of the newly rebranded nonprofit One Institute (formerly One Archives Foundation), the exhibit and the Circa festival are attempts to make these various histories be rightly understood as urgent calls to present action.
"What we're going through -- the backlash that LGBTQ people are experiencing today -- is the greatest that I've seen in my 30-plus-year career," Valenzuela says. "I mean, not since the dark days of the AIDS epidemic. I haven't seen such open hatred, such shamelessness around scapegoating queer and especially trans people."
This was an animating principle for the exhibition curated by Alexis Bard...