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“Although we try to incorporate women as much as we can throughout the entirety of the museum, we felt it was important to dedicate 'A Room of Her Own' to Virginia Woolf’s 1929 feminist text that argues for women’s need for space to think and create.” “Just like in all other aspects of history, women’s involvement with leather tends to be erased and forgotten,” Wasdin said. Two years ago, the museum launched the Women’s Leather History Project to analyze and document women’s involvement in the leather community. Rio Grande Leather of New Mexico, won the International Mr. This is evident in the leather community itself as transgender man, Tyler McCormick, better knowns as Mr. While leather culture is often associated with the gay community, Wasdin said that “leather” is generally an umbrella term, and that the museum strives to be inclusive of all genders and sexual orientations.
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360: Inside the Leather Archive & Museum Library The museum seeks projects that will use its archival and research collections to create new scholarship related to its history and culture. Officials have announced the museum’s eighth annual Visiting Scholars Program for 2019, in which a stipend of $1,000 will be awarded to someone to conduct research using the collections of the Leather Archives & Museum. His work is still studied and admired, through the help of the museum’s research. Fakir Musafar, an American piercer and body performance artist, holds a spot in this section of the archives for his works documented in photographs and a copy of his book, “Spirit and Flesh: Body Rites and Modifications”. Part of this education is focused on a particular kink that is sometimes forgotten in the community, ranging from piercings to flesh hook suspension. Additionally, the collection houses unpublished records, letters and other documents used by scholars to do analysis on the leather community. The building houses the Teri Rose Library, which contains more than 12,000 books, 13,000 magazines, 100 journals and 5,000 films devoted to leather and kink. The archives try to remove the stigma of this from the community, and this starts through education. Interactive quiz: Take the BDSM safety quiz As long as people have existed, we've been having really crazy, wild, kinky sex.” “The biggest misconception people have about the leather community is the fact that alternative sexual practices have been going on for years and years, but people just don't want to talk about it. “Our primary purpose of existence is being a research facility,” said Gary Wasdin, the museum’s new executive director. Recently, the museum board adopted a new mission statement designed to set the focus and priorities of the Rogers Park community. The museum is a library, museum and archival collection pertaining to leather, fetishism, sadomasochism and alternative sexual practices. Hidden away in Rogers Park, just minutes from the Loyola Red Line stop, is the Leather Archives & Museum.įounded by Chuck Renslow in 1991 in a location that was once a synagogue, the historic kink museum is based on Chicago’s first leather gay bar, the Gold Coast, at 501 N.
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(Photo/Faith Berwick) Cultural Shift in Chicago's Leather CommunityĮditors note: Some of the content in this article is not suitable for work and contains explicit content that may not be suitable for readers under the age of 18.īy Faith Berwick and Rebecca May 3, 2019 An iron mask on display at the Leather Archives & Museum.