Exhibition

(Dis)Placing Us On The Map: An Interactive Exhibition of LGBTQIA+ Spaces

Sun, Mar 22, 2026

6:00 PM–8:00 PM

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, 74A East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003. Free and open to the public. Please register to attend.

To see photos and a recap of this exhibition and project, click here.

We recently gathered to celebrate CUNY Adjunct Incubator awardee Natalie Willens’ project, “(Dis)Placing Us On The Map: An Interactive Exhibition of LGBTQIA+ Spaces”—an exhibition of photographs and oral Histories created by LaGuardia Community College students of queer/trans people taking up space in NYC.

This interactive exhibition brought to life an evolving archive created by LaGuardia Community College students documenting essential LGBTQIA+ spaces across New York City. Through photographs and oral histories, the exhibition honored four organizations/spaces that have sustained queer and trans life across generations: Queer | Art, National Queer Theater, Queens Community House’s Center for Gay Seniors, and Callen-Lorde.

This project centers stories of LGBTQIA+ artistry, mentorship, mutual aid, healthcare, and activism. Members of each organization spoke about the care work and collective labor that shaped and protected these sites—often in the face of displacement, underfunding, and political hostility. Their stories illuminated how LGBTQIA+ spaces are not only physical locations, but living networks of resistance, creativity, and belonging.

People were invited to move beyond observation into participation. A large, collective map of the city served as a gathering point where visitors could pin spaces that have been meaningful to them—past or present—expanding the archive in real time. Through written reflections and recorded responses, attendees could also share their visions for future liberatory LGBTQIA+ spaces in NYC: What do we need now? How could funding and space allocation build new possibilities for LGBTQIA+ care, mutual aid, mentorship, and artistry in our city? How do landback and reparations fit in to these visions?

By weaving together student research, community memory, and public imagination, the exhibition positioned the archive not as a static record, but as an active, intergenerational dialogue. It asked us to remember, to honor, and to build—together.

This event is co-sponsored by CLAGS, the Center for LGBTQ+ Studies, and the CUNY Adjunct Incubator award from the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center. Also made possible by generous funding from the New York City Council to the CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium, and supported by the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives.

For more information about the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, who generously supported this work from the beginning, click here.

For more information about these spaces, take a look at their websites:

Queer | Art

National Queer Theater

Queens Community House’s Center for Gay Seniors

Callen-Lorde

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club

Organizer

Natalie Willens

Natalie Willens is an educator, artist, organizer, and Ph.D. candidate in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. They have published poetry, essays, and photography on the intersections of art and activism, and are working on a multi-year project with LaGuardia Community College students to creatively archive underfunded LGBTQ+ spaces in New York City.