The Vermont Folklife Center reopened earlier this month with an exhibition co-presented by Pride Center of Vermont. “Pride 1983” explores the origins and lasting legacy of Burlington, Vermont’s first LGBTQ2+ Pride celebration on June 25, 1983.
On June 25, 1983, the first Lesbian and Gay Pride March in Vermont took place in Burlington, 14 years after the Stonewall Uprising. From the very beginning the Pride events in Vermont were a celebration as well as a march. 350 people, many of them women, rallied in City Hall Park and marched through downtown Burlington — a memorable event that has taken place in either Burlington or Montpelier every year since.
Curated by Meg Tamulonis of the Vermont Queer Archives — a program of the Pride Center of Vermont — “Pride 1983” draws on archival materials from that collection as well as from UVM Special Collections, Out in the Open’s Andrews Inn Oral History Project, and the personal collections of those featured in the exhibition.
In addition, Tamulonis worked with the Vermont Folklife Center to conduct interviews with twelve activists and organizers crucial to the establishment of Pride in Burlington. The exhibit includes a series of stunning portrait photographs of these early pride founders taken by Brooklyn-based photographer and Bennington College alumnus, M. Sharkey.
The show is open Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. at Vermont Folklife Center, 88 Main Street, in Middlebury. It runs through March 25, 2022.
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