June 2022 History Colorado Highlights Include New Exhibits/Events, Kids are Now Free, LGBTQ+ Pride Month Tie-ins, and a Big Grant to Expand Underrepresented Colorado History
Denver, Colo. (May 26, 2022) — June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month. History Colorado’s highlights for June include remarkable exhibits and events including four Pride Month efforts. Our highlights also include news about our new 18 and under admission policy and info about a big grant to create new insight into historical Colorado.
Kids Are Now Free
History Colorado believes in building an informed future by connecting people of all ages to their past. As such, History Colorado is proud to enhance access to our seven museums for families across Colorado by now (starting May 28, 2022) offering free general admission to kids 18 and under. This new policy has no expiration date. History Colorado will continue to offer fun hands-on expert-facilitated or guided-discovery tours for field-trip and other student groups for $5 or less per pupil. These offerings support academic standards goals. Visit historycolorado.org/field-
FOUR PRIDE MONTH EFFORTS
Visit History Colorado’s LGBTQ Coloradans page for more information on the following:
New LGBTQ+ Exhibition - Rainbows and Revolutions: Supported by the Gill Foundation
History Colorado Center | Opens June 4, 2022
Experience the story of LGBTQ+ Coloradans, from fighting for equal rights to celebrating community, in a new exhibition coming to History Colorado entitled Rainbows and Revolutions. For more than two years, museum curators have collected oral histories, photos, and historical artifacts from Colorado’s LGBTQ+ community. This exhibition will dive deep into the struggles and successes of LGBTQ+ Coloradans and their allies who changed the cultural, business and political landscape of our state. This groundbreaking, extensive wide-ranging exhibition brings together, for the first time, a broad overview of Colorado’s LGBTQ+ history. It will recognize and celebrate the earliest record of LGBTQ+ residents in our state, to contemporary artists, activists, entrepreneurs and allies pushing the movement forward today. Visitors will feel the full impact of the journey through the decades: oppression and exclusion but also pride and community.
LGBTQ+ Exhibition - Queer Capitol Hill
History Colorado Center | Opened May 20, 2022
Experience how Capitol Hill became a center of queer life, love and liberation through the comic-style illustrations of Artist/Historian B. Erin Cole. You’ll experience where LGBTQ+ Coloradans gathered and organized from the 1950s through the 1970s.
LGBTQ+ Event - Queer-ilderness: A Mild-Wild PRIDE EVENT, for 13-year-olds & up
History Colorado Center | June 25, 2022 | 6-11pm | Ages 13-20 $13 & 21+ $21
Come as you are smelling like teen spirit to the Queer-ilderness: A Mild-Wild PRIDE EVENT, for 13-year-olds and up. From camping to glamping, walk, pose, dance, play, craft, draw, sketch, write, and be in what makes you feel your most comfy or wildly Queer. There will be activities happening all night, and access to History Colorado’s Rainbows & Revolutions LGBTQ+ exhibit. Aspiring Drag Queens & Kings can sign up to walk the runway to these three categories: 90s Grunge, Queer in the Wilderness, and Your Favorite Historical Queer. This Pride event is alcohol-free, fun, and full of glee. All ages 13 and up are encouraged to come to play for a sober evening before the Pride Parade the next morning! Eat dinner before! Light snacks and beverages are provided.
LGBTQ+ Event - History Colorado’s Denver Pride Parade Float at Pride Fest
Cheesman Park to Civic Center | June 26, 2022 | 9:30am
This year History Colorado supporters will be marching alongside a colorful and distinctive parade float. The float will feature rainbow sculptures of the word “LOVE” and a heart made out of legos. Commemorative History Colorado pride flags will be given to parade-goers to receive free admission.
New Exhibition - Steel City: 1980-2004
El Pueblo History Museum | Opens June 4, 2022
A new core exhibition, Steel City: 1980-2004, shows the power of solidarity among steelworkers and community members in Pueblo amidst great adversity. Steel City features oral histories, archival documents, historic photographs, newspaper clippings, and more, displaying the integral part Pueblo’s landmark steel mill plays in its history and culture. Visitors will explore the evolution and history of a steel making community in the late-twentieth century. The exhibition will emphasize individual and collective actions of Puebloans during economic hardship in the 1980s through the United Steelworkers’ historic strike, illuminating the resilience of the community. Find more information here.
New Exhibition - More Than Place: Colorado, Women, and Land
Center for Colorado Women’s History | Opens May 30, 2022
Experience the More Than Place: Colorado, Women, and Land exhibition where the legacies of Western women of their role and place on the land can be explored. The exhibit challenges perceptions of the rights women had at the time and centers upon diverse communities of Colorado women. From Indigenous keepers of the land in Colorado’s mountains and plains to Mexican Land Grants and the Homestead Act of 1862, to building communities in rural Colorado, come see how women since the 1800s have played an integral and often invisible role in shaping the land of our state. Find more information here.
New Exhibition - Gregg Deal’s (Pyramid Lake Paiute) “Merciless Indian Savages”
Fort Garland Museum & Cultural Center | Opens June 24, 2022
The thought-provoking artworks of nationally renowned contemporary artist Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute) comprise the latest exhibit opening June 24 at the Fort Garland Museum & Cultural Center in Fort Garland. “Merciless Indian Savages” gets its title from a reference Thomas Jefferson made about Native Americans in the Declaration of Independence. In the exhibit, Deal’s artworks lead visitors through an Indigenous exploration of what American Democracy means in Indian Country. Deal’s works reveal a political process that marginalizes Native peoples in the service of American myth-making. Through “Merciless Indian Savages,” Deal seeks to answer through art questions about the meaning of “American Democracy. These include: “How does an Indigenous person stay true to their identity while participating in a culture that has stereotyped them?; and, “What does it mean to communicate an Indigenous message, when to do so, effectively means to speak through the filters of capitalism, nationalism and mainstream American society?”. Visitors may learn previously unknown perspectives through this collection. This traveling exhibit was most recently on display at History Colorado’s Ute Indian Museum in Montrose. Find more information here.
History Colorado to Expand Insight on 19th/20th Century Colorado History
History Colorado recently commenced work on a three-year, $250,696 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to make the bulk of an over 100,000 item Western history archive known as “The Mazzulla Collection” accessible to scholars and the public via cataloging and digitization. History Colorado applied for the grant because it will add an unprecedented level of insight on previously underrepresented Colorado populations from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries.
This massive collection was gathered by Trinidad, Colo. amateur-historian Fred Milo Mazzulla, 1903-1981, who sought to preserve the most interesting stories coming out of the American West. Not only was Mazzulla a first-generation Italian-American defense attorney; he was an avid writer and photographer. Besides thousands of photographs, the collection includes audio interviews of western pioneers, scrapbooks, correspondence, diaries, legal records, news clippings and other memorabilia. Further, it enables the telling of yester-year’s story about Colorado and the American West to include locations, ethnic groups and socio-economic communities that have been largely ignored. For instance, the collection sheds light on the history of Hispanos, women, African Americans, sex work and religious sects.
By making the ‘Mazzulla Collection’ accessible to scholars and the public, the materials are expected to spark new Western U.S. historical research and scholarship regarding six major topics. These include: Law and Crime; Life in Railroad and Mining Towns; Political Figures; Hispanic Culture and Practices; African-American Culture and Society; and, Western Artists.
“We will be able to capitalize on the learning and research benefits of this collection through educational programs and exhibits by sharing it with History Colorado’s myriad of audiences and academic contacts,” concludes History Colorado Director of Collections Access Melissa de Bie.
Special Event: Bold Women Change History Lecture Series
State Historian’s Address: Dr. Nicki Gonzales
History Colorado Center | June 8, 2022 | 7pm | Non-members $15, Members $10
Colorado’s first Latina State Historian will deliver in English, "Una carta de amor para mi comunidad: A love letter to my community,” describing her journey across the state this past year, as Colorado’s State Historian, celebrating, honoring and listening to stories which “for too long have been pushed to the margins.” Gonzales is a professor of history and vice president for diversity and inclusion at Regis University. Her historical expertise focuses on Chicano history and Southwest social and political movements. She has worked to support more inclusive practices in historical inquiry so that more unrecognized stories get shared publicly. Governor Polis named Gonzales to the Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board in 2020.
Pike’s Stockade Historic Site, Trails and Picnic Area Opens for Summer Season
History Colorado’s Pike’s Stockade Historic Site opens for the Summer Season on May 28. The stockade features educational panels, walking paths and picnic areas. It is located on the Conejos River in the San Luis Valley near Sanford, Colorado at 22862 Co Rd 24, Sanford, CO, 81151. The stockade is a reconstruction of a log fortress built by U.S. soldiers on the Zebulon Pike Expedition in January 1807. The replica stockade was first built in 1952 and was named a National Historic Landmark in 1961. History Colorado has administered the site for nearly a century and it is maintained by their Fort Garland Museum & Cultural Center staff.
New Events and Programs
To learn more about History Colorado’s new events and programs visit our website. Explore historical places, events and people through lectures, guided tours and online or in-person classes. Upcoming events include: The Brewsology Beerfest, A Mesa Verde Trek, Black Influencers Bus Tour and the 2022: The Year of Lincoln Hills Lecture by Judge Gary Jackson.
About History Colorado
History Colorado is a division of the Colorado Department of Higher Education and a 501(c)3 non-profit that serves more than 75,000 students and 500,000 people in Colorado each year. It is a 143-year-old institution that operates Colorado’s oldest museum, ten additional museums and historic sites, a free public research center, the Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, and the History Colorado State Historical Fund (SHF), which is the nation’s largest preservation program of its kind. More than 70% of SHF grants are allocated in rural areas of the state.
History Colorado’s mission is to create a better future for Colorado by inspiring wonder in our past. We serve as the state’s memory, preserving and sharing the places, stories, and material culture of Colorado through educational programs, historic preservation grants, collecting, outreach to Colorado communities, the History Colorado Center and Stephen H. Hart Research Center in Denver, and 11 other museums and historic attractions statewide. History Colorado is one of only six Smithsonian Affiliates in Colorado. Visit HistoryColorado.org, or call 303-HISTORY, for more information.
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