March 2024
“What did it feel like to be there? 12 Portraits from the Addresses Project” Exhibition opens at City Lore Gallery
March 29 - June 30, 2024
City Lore
56 East 1st Street, New York, NY
Opening Reception: March 29th, 6-8pm Gallery Hours: Fridays, 2:00 – 6:00 pm, Saturdays and Sundays, 12:00 – 6:00 pm
Exhibition Programming:
Thursday, April 25th 6-8pm Speaking with Queer Ancestors: A poetry night hosted by Velvetpark featuring Yamilette Vizcaino Rivera, Sarah Bridgins, Nancy Huang, Gabrielle Randall, Ty Little, Alexander Cavaluzzo, Mia Arias Tsung, Saretta Morgan (Pending), Sarah Drepaul (Video projection)
Friday, May 17th 7-9pm Sundays at Cafe Tabac: The PODCAST Live Recording with Karen Song and Sara Elise
Saturday May 25th 4-6pm Sundays at Cafe Tabac: The PODCAST Live Recording with Karen Song and Chani Nicholas
Thursday, June 6th 6:30-8:30pm Kay Turn Her and the Pages and The Oral Tradition present “Lesbian Songbook Hour”: A mash-up of songs written, covered, and performed by Kay Turner and friends 1972-2024.
Saturday, June 22 (time TBA) The Feminist Institute Memory Lab Drop In Session with Allison Elliot
December 2022
Panel Discussion featuring activists from The Addresses Project in conjunction with exhibition “What did it feel like to be there? 12 Portraits from the Addresses Project” at Pen and Brush Gallery
Thursday, December 8, 2022, 6-8pm
29 East 22nd Street, New York, NY
On view through December 17, 2022 Gallery Hours: Tues.-Sat. 12-6pm
October 2022
“What did it feel like to be there? 12 Portraits from the Addresses Project” Exhibition opens at Pen and Brush Gallery
October 13 - December 17, 2022
Pen + Brush
29 East 22nd Street, New York, NY
Opening Reception: Oct. 13th, 6-8pm Gallery Hours: Tues.-Sat. 12-6pm
The Addresses Project is presented in Pen + Brush’s downstairs gallery. The works and ephemera presented here highlights important figures that were working in advocacy, some with Michela Griffo, for the past half century in New York City. Pen + Brush, being a 128-year-old non-profit fighting with equity in the arts, feels particularly grateful and close to the subjects pictured here.
What did it feel like to be there?: 12 Portraits from The Addresses Project presents a selection of twelve portraits from a larger multi-disciplinary project by Gwen Shockey with Riya Lerner featuring lesbian and queer women who have dedicated their lives to creating and holding space for women in New York City from the 1950s to today. The individuals included in the series represent a diverse network of community builders engaged with social and political organizing, mental health advocacy, nightlife, music, journalism, visual art, literature, poetry, performance, research, safer sex and kink practices. Each portrait includes a photograph taken in a significant location for the sitter, along with segments from their oral history interview and selected ephemera from their life and work.
August 2022
The Feminist Institute Features The Addresses Project:
“Welcome to our new Project Feature series, where we highlight independent memory projects on our blog to explore the intricacies and importance of these projects in documenting feminist contributions to culture! Additionally, we will ingest objects into our digital archive to further preserve and connect these materials with other feminist documentation.”
(c) Riya Lerner, Cassandra Grant at Home, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, NY, 2020, Archival pigment print, 16 x 20 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
June 2022
What did it feel like to be there?
12 Portraits from The Addresses Project
by Gwen Shockey and Riya Lerner
June 15 - September 1, 2022
The Center, 208 West 13th St., New York, NY
Opening Reception: Wednesday, June 15, 6-9pm
To RSVP please email rmorales@gaycenter.org
After Party: June 15, 9-11pm at Henrietta Hudson
438 Hudson St., New York, NY
What did it feel like to be there? presents a selection of twelve portraits from a larger multi-disciplinary project by Gwen Shockey with Riya Lerner featuring lesbian and queer women who have dedicated their lives to creating and holding space for women in New York City from the 1950s to today. The individuals included in the series represent a diverse network of community builders engaged with social and political organizing, mental health advocacy, nightlife, music, journalism, visual art, literature, poetry, performance, research, safer sex and kink practices. Each portrait includes a photograph taken in a significant location for the sitter, along with segments from their oral history interview and selected ephemera from their life and work. To see the full project please visit addressesproject.com.
Funding for The LGBT Community Center’s Queer Womxn’s Series made possible by the generous contributions of Amy Ellis and Trudy Sanders Reece.
June 2021
In 2020 the Lesbian Bar Project launched a PSA and a 4 week fundraising effort that raised over $117K for the bars. On June 3rd 2021, they are launching a 20 minute documentary film. The film will be through the lens of the bar owners, community activists, archivists (including our Addresses Project), and patrons - their struggles during the pandemic, their hopes for the future, and why we must work to save these sacred spaces. This will launch another 4 week fundraising effort. The goal is to raise $200K for our bars during Pride Month 2021.
September 2020
July 2020
The ADDRESSES PROJECT receives “Money for Women” from The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Inc.
“Founded in 1975 by writer and civil rights activist Barbara Deming, Money for Women is the oldest ongoing feminist granting agency. Grants from the foundation give monetary support and encouragement to individual feminist writers and visual artists. The Fund relies on a volunteer Board of Directors and carefully chosen judges who collaborate in making awards. While other grant sources have come and gone, Money for Women is now in its fourth decade, still feminist and still willing to take risks.”
Polaroid from Wanda's iconic party, "No Day Like Sunday at Cafe Tabac." Image courtesy of Wanda Acosta.
June 2020
Them.us Now List 2020: Gwen Shockey’s Archive of NYC’s Lesbian Spaces Is More Important Than Ever
By Michelle Kim
“Welcome to the Now List, them.’s annual celebration of visionary LGBTQ+ artists, activists, and community members. Read more from our honorees here, and check out the full list of winners here.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, lesbian bars were in danger. Though the number of LGBTQ+-identified people in the U.S. has risen in the past few years, spaces for queer womxn have declined due to a number of factors, including gentrification and the proliferation of dating apps. In the beginning of May, there was thought to be just 16 lesbian bars remaining nationwide — a tragic figure considering that many of these establishments are crucial sites for queer womxn to meet, celebrate, and find intimacy in safety. In New York City, which use to have more lesbian bars in the 1930s than today, those that remain — like West Village’s Henrietta Hudson and Cubbyhole — are confronting a loss of business due to COVID-19 as a severe blow to their operations.
The ephemerality of these sacred spaces is why New York City-based artist Gwen Shockey has set out to preserve their memory through her Addresses Project (2016-present). By conducting interviews and sifting through a slew of newspaper clippings, blogs, Facebook event listings, police records, tax information, and business bureau records, she has pinpointed nearly 100 lesbian bars and parties that have existed from 1900 to the present day throughout the city’s five boroughs. The multidisciplinary project involves a number of constantly updating parts in order to paint multifaceted portraits of these bygone sites — including an interactive map featuring pictures of the each of the bars’ abandoned storefronts, an archive of oral history interviews, and a new portraiture series by the photographer Riya Lerner — which is now on virtual display via The Center.”
Riya Lerner, Kay Turner, Addresses Project, 2020, gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in. Courtesy of the artist.
June 2020
Online Exhibition:
TAKING SPACE: A Queer Womxn’s Portrait Series by Gwen Shockey and Riya Lerner
The Center, New York, NY
On view: June 10-September 10, 2020
Taking Space was initially conceived of as an exhibition at The Center, which has been postponed. These four selections are from a larger series of mixed-media portraits by Gwen Shockey and Riya Lerner featuring lesbian and queer women who have dedicated their lives to creating and holding space for women in New York City from the 1950s to today. The individuals included in the series represent a diverse network of community builders engaged with social and political organizing, mental health advocacy, nightlife, music, journalism, visual art, literature, poetry, performance, research, safer sex and kink practices. Each portrait includes a photograph taken in a significant location for the sitter, along with segments from their oral history interview and selected ephemera from their life and work.
May 2020
NBC NEWS: Few lesbian bars remain in the U.S. Will they survive COVID-19?
By Julie Compton
“New York City has witnessed the country’s largest rise and fall in lesbian spaces — with about 200 opening and closing over the last century (including bars, cafes, bookstores, and community centers), according to Gwen Shockey, creator of the Addresses Project, a digital tool that tracks the city’s lesbian venues. Shockey said New York saw a wave of lesbian bar openings in the the ‘70s and ‘80s, likely bolstered by the surging feminist and LGBTQ rights movements of the time and the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974, which made it illegal for banks to deny loans on the basis of gender.”
January 2020
ADDRESSES PROJECT RECEIVES NYFA FISCAL SPONSORSHIP
NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship is one of the oldest and most reputable programs of its kind in the country. Fiscal Sponsorship increases funding opportunities for individual artists and emerging arts organizations in all disciplines by allowing them to raise funds using NYFA's tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3)-classified organization.