At The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Harrison Apple (they/them), co-director of the Pittsburgh Queer History Project, unfolds the city’s queer past like a fragile letter pulled from a back pocket.
What started in 2009 as an art student helping clean out an old nightclub became something much larger. A commitment to preserving the overlooked, discarded, and deeply personal artifacts of Pittsburgh’s queer life. Flyers. Journals. Drink receipts. Even a crumpled piece of paper that simply read, “Fuck off.”
“It tells you something,” Harrison reflects. “What people were eating. Drinking. Who they were talking to. What they threw away.”
Through oral history and ethical archival work, the Pittsburgh Queer History Project maps the city’s gay and trans nightlife, ballroom culture, and activist movements while always centering consent and care. Some stories, Harrison says, are meant to be taken “to the grave.”
Looking back across the 20th century, they see something crucial in solidarity across movements. Queer liberation never existed in isolation. And remembering that interconnected struggle may be one of our strongest tools for the future.
Because history isn’t just about what happened. It’s about how we take care of one another now and how we refuse to lose sight of each other moving forward.