So much anti-gay revisionist history in this video.

sad to not see Hilma af klint

I’m 58 my grandaughter is Bi Sexual , and one of my grandsons is gay , although he hasnt said anything to anyone . I’m horrified to think parents could throw there kids out for being gay , I’ve seen documentaries about parents not accepting there sons ashes as he was gay and died of AIDS , omg first and foremost in life , a Woman is a mother , we love out children unconditionally . No matter what sexual preferences they have , I do understand that in the 80s when aids came out parents were ashamed and embarrassed , even the men dying of aids some themselves were shamed into hiding there health , if you’re neighbours will hate you for having a gay son , move houses , the neighbour isnt that good of a friend if they hate you’re gay son or daughter , im disabled and riddled with arthritis , but I’m at the front on Pride Day on my mobility scooter , which my husband and grandaughter put these big stickers on so my scooter is pride colours , and my massive Tshirt saying I’m. Proud Grandmother of gay grandchildren , I was born 1966 so in the early 80s I was a teenager and didn’t understand it all , but I’m telling you , if it happened now , I’d be first at the hospital door , giving these people food , water there medications, bed baths the lot , not one gay man will suffer on my watch , they lay in there beds while nurses wouldn’t touch them , pass there food to them , they just needed a hand to hold , a person to hug , F--K AIDS . I’m a hugger and hand shaker , and I’d be making those people feel loved , Kudos to those wards that opened in hospitals especially for aids patients to help them , my heart bleeds to think thousands of men died alone because people wouldn’t help them . 😢😢😢

subtitles are not in sync with the sound of the video, could you fix that?

Writing an essay at school on her!! 😁

Vital information and a wealth of knowledge on women artists, many thanks

very helpful recap and q&a. JQTSS's work deserves much consideration and thought that this video facilitates

actually they weren't there that night at stonewall.. we already saw that on another documentary tho... Marsha wasn't even on that side of town at the time,.

I'm shocked at the rewriting and romanticisation of the 1960s through the 1980s, to cast aside the words and actions of our elders. It's not healthy to do this and to view everything through a 2020s lens - especially was the people that were there are still alive. The only people whose voices matter are those that experienced it.

What a pity that I couldn’t be there to see that exhibition.

He lays it on a bit thick (divinity etc) but i appreciate the ‘memorial’. We lived and loved.

Now that rampant gay sex at the piers is over, "respectable" institutions like The Whitney can celebrate it. If polite society really wanted to celebrate this gem of our history, they'd make space for what went down at the piers back in the day along today's waterfont.

"I'm able to see the temples within which they built the divinity of queer identity" Huh? The piers were where horny gay men went to have sex. There was no political or social agenda at the time on the piers. The piers were a convenient and ignored place on the fringes of the city where men (both gay and "straight") could have anonymous sex.

I was 19 in 1981, newly arrived in the Village. I knew the piers were a hotbed of activity - but because it was so dark and scary, I was terrified of venturing over there. So, I never did go. Never got further than the West Side Highway. Kind of regret it now.

We must not allow the homophobes to erase our history!

15:23

We have always been here!

6:05. Call them out sir!!! 😊

Gay nyc have no sense of what it was like to live in that community. AIDS and Reaganomics greed destroyed that era. Chelsea and then Hell's Kitchen are very poor examples of gay communities. Now the neighborhood is the internet. From the dark rooms of touch but don't see it is now screen see but dont touch. So it goes..

Great presentation! Thanks to the presenters, and thanks to the Whitney museum for exhibiting Harold Cohen's work. I worked for Harold as a young man building a robotic arm with Harold's goal to transition from b&w plotter output to full color painting output.

Best piece at the Biennial

It’s like a curse really everywhere there is even a small resemblance of life and something interesting happening immediately the zombie breeders come and spoil the fun.

Is there a book of these photographs? They are amazing and should be preserved.

Amazing❤

This video made me very nostalgic and sentimental. I grew up in NY and was introduced to the piers in the late 70s and early 80s. The piers were a place to relax, to breathe, to enjoy a space that was not encumbered by societies 'dont's'. To hear the music, see and talk to like-minded people, to feel the sun on your skin - or just to gaze at the water and clear your mind. It was glorious!!

👏🏾👍🏾❤️

Read "Rushes"

Kudos , I never knew about the pier until now. Thank heaven for the times that were had by all and sundry being themselves without retribution. An eye opener ; Dang. 🐨❤DD.

I went to the piers with my brother, must have been the early 80s. Both of us gay. He said something like “You can see all kinds of people here,” and I said, “Like a man in heels with no arms?” Because indeed there was a very tall, slim young man with long blond hair and no arms, wearing short shorts, a bikini top and high platforms, stepping over the concrete berm that was supposed to block off the pier. He was lovely. Maybe he’s reading this. Maybe someone reading this knows him.

I came out in 1968 and thee next year my parents sold our home on Long Island; they were done with living in the states. I wasn't ready to leave with them at the time when I was wide-eyed at new possibilties so i moved to the village and sofa surfed in the East Village. That's when I met Sylvia & Marsha. Talk about protective and caring, and in Sylvia - anger at all the injustices. Now, over half a century later I still remember what she said one night after trying to make some solidarity with Matachine and other groups: "At the end of all this, it's the street and trans communities that are going to take the hits from everybody else."

infuriating.i was there - a gay kid meeting wanting loving. youve given my history in this vid entirely to the trans kids - certainly a small percentage of us - because its fashionable. entirely skewing our history.

Awesomeness

Thanks for this Video, I’m a Minnesota boy/ 74 yr old now ….

They were not “trans” anything in n 1969, they were Drag Queens that stood up to the cops, fact check yourself!

Queer ...blah...blah..." queer" is just another affectation. It doesn't stand for my identity at all.

Good , art criticism .

I used to go to the Morton Street Pier in its heyday. The buildings at one time were owned by the Erie Lackawanna Railroad so the joke about the area was, "It's kind of eerie and a lot go ona." LOL

Important to know the history. Even us stodgy old straight folks should do a little reading and educate ourselves on the hows, whys, whens and wheres of LGBTQ history. Some real heros in the tale. May they rest in fabulous and peaceful perfection.

Thanks for remembering such an important part of our history. 💕

WOW, so beautiful..as a frequent hanger outer at the piers..i found thisso incredibly moving..loving..& most importantly respecrful..thankyou

Now everything has been sterilized, sanitized, deodorized, plasticized, lobotomized, supervised, white washed, paved over, fenced in, locked out. God forbid there be a square inch of free, wild open space in NYC.

This is so badly mis-titled. It is about SO much more than just ballet. It is one of the most, perhaps THE most quintessential interviews online Fran has done. I know because I have seen every single one….😳❤️

Temples? You’ve got to be kidding

the drugs

What an amazing era that was. I used to hang down there during the 70s and early 80s. Was cool seeing Sneakers, which was one of my hangouts.

I love her so much

Dis-a pier

I worked directly with Harold as a graduate art student and I wrote the early versions of the software that runs the plotters. (My work is credited in the Brooklyn show credit which is in the Whitney show, and he also gave me an Aaron drawing which he tributes to me and signed.) His work is not the same technology we call AI today (machine learning neural nets). What he did we came to be call to "expert systems" but at the time was a form of introspection that Harold engaged in and then translated into code based on his ideas of representation and of how he contemplated his own art making. The drawings have his "hand" in it, the marks are how he drew. You can see it in his amazing hand drawn notebooks as well. For context, he not only wrote the Aaron software on early UNIX machines but also designed the drawing machines and did the hardware. At the time, his work was so ahead of what was going on, and computers were not in wide use at all. A book was written early on (McCordrick) but critics at the time had no understanding of what they were seeing, taking it solely as painting, when in some sense, his art was in the code itself and in the process of his introspection and questions about his art and making "meaningful" drawings, not only in the visual outcome. In conversations I had with him, he foresaw Aaron continuing after his death...

When I go to New York I stay at The Jane because for me it still has a small sense of that history… I’m so happy to see a piece of sculpture celebrating it!

I remember with joy! I was a 7th generation gayman from the south and this was incredible!