"Out in Chicago" exhibit opens at Chicago History Museum, tells city's LGBT history

Co-curators Jill Austin (left) and Jennifer Brier discuss the Chicago History Museum’s new exhibit “Out in Chicago.” Chicago, Chicago, the big city I would love to live in but probably never will. I grew up across the lake in Elkhart, Indiana, and remember trips to Chicago very well. Frank and I are there almost every year for his business, and it remains dear to my heart. A new exhibit is opening today at the History Museum, chronicling the proud story of the city’s LGBT history. I remember walking down Halsted Street when I was a teenager and knowing I wasn’t alone, long before my life in Los Angeles and now New York. From the Sun-Times:
In 1958, Chuck Renslow, his friends and their group’s affinity for leather was too much for a Chicago gay bar called Omar’s. Tossed out, Renslow decided to open his own nightspot, the Gold Coast Bar, a haven for people of all persuasions that was the country’s first leather bar.
“I was just trying to bring the leather community together,” said Renslow, 82. “It was a place where leather men could meet and know each other.” A mural of Renslow and friends from the Gold Coast Bar is now a piece of Chicago history, part of a new exhibit “Out in Chicago” opening Saturday at the Chicago History Museum. “We’re telling Chicago history through the lens of LGBT history,” said Jill Austin, a Chicago History Museum curator who co-curated the exhibit with Jennifer Brier, an associate dean and professor at University of Illinois at Chicago.]]>