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. “ 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. 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.
GLBT Historical Society / Courtesy of Andrew ShafferĪ priceless piece of queer history has returned home to San Francisco, reports Ezra David Romero for KQED. Queer artist Gilbert Baker preserved this 10- by 28-foot section of an original 1978 pride flag.