[Exhibition] Stormé at Stonewall featured at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.

Exhibition — on indefinite display

National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

LJ Roberts’s large-scale installation, ‘Stormé at Stonewall’, is now on view at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C. as part of the museum’s permanent collection in the newly installed Struggle for Justice Gallery.
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‘Stormé at Stonewall’ was originally commissioned in 2019 by the Brooklyn Museum for the exhibition ‘Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall’. The work is composed of 14 collaged light boxes and honors Stormé DeLarverie who was alleged to have been a critical instigator in the Stonewall Uprising, though is often omitted from mainstream accounts of the rebellion.
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The light boxes transform differing New York Times accounts of the Stonewall Riots into original prose, which is juxtaposed with images from DeLarverie’s performances and life, as well as queered architectural environs from the West Village, highlighting her role in queer and trans liberation beyond the uprising. ‘Stormé at Stonewall’ presents a poetic and visual document that acknowledges DeLarvarie’s (in)visibility while honoring her remarkable legacy.
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Image: Installation view of ‘Stormé at Stonewall’, Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution and Mark Gulezian.