Alice's identity crisis

Abstract

On 31 July 1994 the Board of Directors of the Alice Austen House Museum on Staten Island, NY presented its annual Nautical Festival at the Museum. The Festival, like other events the museum hosts throughout the year, celebrates the life and work of photographer Alice Austen (1866–1952), and encourages visits to the museum, a Victorian cottage known as ‘Clear Comfort’, which was her family home. On this particular occasion, visitors to the Festival and museum volunteers were greeted by demonstrators from the Lesbian Avengers, an activist organization ‘dedicated to fighting for lesbian visibility and survival’. 1 To the dismay of some volunteers, demonstrators marched through the grounds proclaiming the Alice Austen House Museum a ‘National Historic Lesbian Landmark’.2 Lesbian Avengers distributed pamphlets at the demonstration, which maintained that although the Board of Directors of the Alice Austen House Museum denies publicly Austen's homosexual orientation, her collection of photographs documents her life as a white, middle-class lesbian at the turn of the century. 3 In addition, Austen shared ‘Clear Comfort’ with her lover, Gertrude Tate, for almost 30 years.4 Their exclusive relationship lasted for 55 years.