San Francisco’s Chinatown opens world’s 1st Chinese queer museum

A new museum in San Francisco’s Chinatown is giving Chinese and Chinese American LGBTQ+ stories a public home for the first time.

The OUT Museum, located at 949 Clay St., opened with a rainbow-ribbon cutting ceremony on May 29. Its one-room gallery features photography, zines and an interactive installation by artists from China and the Chinese diaspora. Curator and founder Xiangqi Chen, who left China in 2022 after the government began cracking down on spaces for LGBTQ+ activism, launched a Kickstarter for the museum and drew more than 2,000 donors before landing a residency with the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco.

“Here in San Francisco Chinatown, I still continued my journey and met so many like-minded community members and friends,” Chen told the Associated Press through an interpreter. “It kind of actually encouraged me and gave me lots of strength to do what I know is my mission, my calling.”

The museum, for Chinese and Chinese American LGBTQ+ people, fills a gap that mainstream institutions have long left open. Crystal Jang, an 80-year-old Chinatown native who came out at 13 and marched in the neighborhood’s Lunar New Year parade as part of the first LGBTQ+ Asian American contingent in 1996, said it took an immigrant from China to give that history a place to land. “We have always been here,” she told the San Francisco Public Press.

The OUT Museum is open Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with plans to expand its exhibits and hours of operation.