Baker took the item with him when he moved to New York City in 1994.Īfter Baker’s death in 2017, the flag and his other belongings were shipped to his sister, who later passed the fragment along to Charley Beal, president of the Gilbert Baker Foundation. But Baker managed to quietly rescue a 10- by 28-foot segment of the second flag, which had been placed in storage after sustaining water damage, as GLBT Historical Society executive director Terry Bewsick tells the Guardian. One flag was stolen from a community center and never recovered. “… And flags are about proclaiming power, so it’s very appropriate.”ĭespite their outsized global impact, the two original flags were thought to be lost for more than four decades.
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“ doesn’t say the word ‘Gay,’ and it doesn’t say ‘the United States’ on the American flag, but everyone knows visually what they mean,” Baker said in a 2015 conversation with curator Michelle Millar Fisher. The artist proposed a rainbow as a “modern alternative” to the pink triangle-a symbol used by the Nazis to mark and persecute gay people, and one which queer communities have since reclaimed as a symbol of pride. In his memoir, Baker wrote that the rainbow design was “natural and necessary,” adding that the motif “came from earliest recorded history as a symbol of hope.” Lynn Segerblom (Faerie Argyle Rainbow) pictured with one of the original rainbow flags she helped design in 1978 (Later iterations of the flag dropped the hot pink and turquoise stripes because they were costly to produce.) One of the flags also featured a riff on the United States’ national flag, with blue-and-white tie-dyed stars in its upper corner. (Viewers can peruse an online version of the show here.)īaker, Segerblom, McNamara and other activists first flew two versions of their brilliantly colored flag at the United Nations Plaza on June 25, 1978, in celebration of “ Gay Freedom Day.” Each measuring 30- by 60-feet, the designs were hand-stitched and dyed with eight colored stripes: pink to symbolize sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, turquoise for art and magic, blue for serenity, and purple for the spirit, according to the online exhibition.
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It will be featured as the centerpiece of “ Performance, Protest and Politics: The Art of Gilbert Baker,” an ongoing exhibition about the activist’s life and work. The rare fragment-presumed lost for more than four decades-resurfaced last year, writes Peter-Astrid Kane for the Guardian. Per a statement, its creators included queer artists Gilbert Baker, Lynn Segerblom and James McNamara, as well as more than 30 volunteers. Now an internationally recognized symbol of LGBTQ pride and civil rights, the rainbow flag design was conceived by a group of activists in San Francisco in 1978. Earlier this month, the GLBT Historical Society Museum unveiled a glass case containing a rare artifact: a segment of the original rainbow gay pride flag, its colors as vibrant as ever. The flag was my way of saying we as a community need to step back and listen.A priceless piece of queer history has returned home to San Francisco, reports Ezra David Romero for KQED. We cannot ignore that and must make space for them to be heard.
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“Our world is so charged right now and the voices who have been screaming for years are getting louder and louder.
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“The inclusion of the additional stripes means placing emphasis on voices that need to be heard, especially now even more so than two years ago when I originally made the flag,” Quasar said. In an email to them., Quasar clarified that the Progress Pride Flag “was not meant as a replacement” for Baker’s iconic designs, but was intended “as a supplement to the many flags our community uses to represent us.” Those were phased out in a 1979 modification following the death of San Francisco assemblyman and LGBTQ+ rights activist Harvey Milk. The first flag unveiled 42 years ago had eight stripes, with hot pink representing sex and turquoise for magic. The six stripes in the widely popularized rainbow flag of today each represent an idea that resonates with LGBTQ+ people: red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for peace, and purple for spirit.īut Baker’s flag has changed numerous times throughout the years. The Progress Pride Flag and Philadelphia’s Pride banner made waves at the time, with critics claiming that Gilbert Baker’s 1978 design, which has since been included in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection, didn’t need to be updated. “We still have movement forward to make,” Quasar wrote at the time. In a statement posted to the campaign’s Kickstarter page, Quasar said the goal was to emphasize “what is important in our current community climate,” namely the inclusion of Black, Brown, and trans people long marginalized by the mainstream LGBTQ+ movement.