Please Note: This event has expired.
Join us on First Friday to celebrate the opening of the “With Open Heart and Open Arms” exhibition.
With Open Heart and Open Arms: LGBTQ Cuban Refugees and the LGBTQ Community’s Response to the Mariel Boatlift
June 2–30, 2021
Center for Community Engagement
On Friday, June 4, the Center for Community Engagement will be open to the public from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m. to celebrate the opening of this exhibition. Face coverings will be required regardless of vaccination status.
From April through October 1980, approximately 125,000 refugees fled their homes in Cuba and traveled by American ships and boats to Key West in the United States. Among those who left from the Cuban port of Mariel (and thus have become known as Marielitos) were a sizable number of LGBTQ+ Cubans. These new residents of the United States were assisted in their resettlement by dedicated members of the LGBTQ+ community, including many from Pennsylvania who assisted at the resettlement camp in Fort Indiantown Gap in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, or helped those who settled in Pennsylvania.
This traveling exhibit explores the circumstances surrounding the exodus and resettlement, focusing on the personal stories of LGBTQ+ Cuban refugees who have since made their lives in this country. The exhibit commemorates the 40th anniversary of this event through photographs, documents, videos and narrative text (in both Spanish and English). The exhibit also includes video clips from interviews with several of the LGBTQ+ Marielitos, and several members of the LGBTQ+ community in Pennsylvania who assisted in their resettlement.
The exhibit is curated by John Anderies, Director of the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives, William Way LGBT Community Center, Philadelphia, and is produced and managed by the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project for the PA LGBT History Network. It is supported by funding from the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Fund of Philadelphia, the Schlegel-Deibler Charitable Foundation, the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project and the William Way LGBT Community Center.
The Center’s regular summer operating hours are:
Monday–Thursday, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.
Friday, 9–11 a.m.
Image credit: Garry Lenton, photographer, Cuban Refugees at Ft. Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, 1980. Lebanon Daily News. Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
ADMISSION INFO
Phone: 7178151213
Email: cce@ycp.edu
Website: https://www.ycp.edu/about-us/offices-and-departments/center-for-communit...
LOCATION
59 E. Market St., York, PA 17401
PARKING INFO
Paid parking is available in the nearby Market Street parking garage, and metered street parking is available on Duke Street.
