Not One Monument but 12: Re-memorializing the Stonewall Riots

How can a riot be memorialized? Specifically, in the case of the Stonewall riots—the legendary five days of rioting in 1969 that launched the gay liberation movement in New York—how did the act of fighting back against cops enforcing the criminalization of being queer and trans so quickly become a corporate-sponsored parade in which the police participate? Why does the Gay Liberation monument (1980), a George Segal commission for the 10th anniversary of the riots, depict four figures quietly socializing in Christopher Park instead of scores of drag queens throwing high heels and ripping parking meters out of the ground? In the leadup to this year’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, artist Chris E. Vargas chose, in his residency and exhibition at the New Museum, to focus on the park as a fraught site of representation and shifting historical memory.

was produced under the banner of Vargas’ ongoing project The Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art (MOTHA). The semi-fictional institution, of which Vargas positions himself the executive director, seeks to “bring is the latest iteration of MOTHA’s ongoing exhibition series , which parodies exhibitions such as the British Museum’s and the Smithsonian’s to interrogate the role of display in narrating dominant histories. The twist of MOTHA’s exhibitions is the addition of objects created by contemporary artists and the renouncement of boundaries between the known and the unknowable. Each exhibition builds toward the 99 promised objects and focuses on local trans histories and legends to engage with “the real and imagined pre-histories of the identity and community formation we call transgender.” In keeping with this format, takes up the Stonewall riots and Segal’s monument in Christopher Park as a contested site of transgender representation and historical narration.