SCOOP. Drag Events Return to Smithsonian
SCOOP. Drag Events Return to Smithsonian
Just in time for Pride Month 🏳️🌈
Smithsonian Secretary Lonny Bunch has agreed to host two neurodiverse drag story hours as part of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum’s Pride Month programming in New York City. Bunch’s decision to host drag story hours at Smithsonian facilities is a stunning (and welcome) reversal from December when he told a House committee, “I think it’s not appropriate to expose children to drag shows.” The remark prompted an internal audit of drag events at the Smithsonian’s twenty facilities, including eleven museums on the National Mall.
Two Neurodiverse Drag Brunches
The first drag story hour will be led by Bad News Bear, a “punky-clown persona” who has performed in drag as a king and queen for six years.
The second storyteller is Mexican drag queen Lori Lu who started the first-ever drag story hour in Mexico before setting up chapters throughout the country. She now performs (and sings!) in New York City.
GOP Culture War on Drag
This year, at least 15 state legislatures have considered legislation to ban “Drag Queen Story Hour” events in which performers read to children, often at public libraries. Drag events “show the things that kids and drag queens have in common—like a love of drama, sass, and sparkle,” according to a 2017 blog on the Smithsonian website.
In December, Rep. Stephanie Bice, an Oklahoma Republican, questioned Bunch about drag events for children at the Smithsonian facilities, prompting a general review of drag performances.
The last time a drag event was hosted at a Smithsonian facility was a free show at the Diker Pavilion during last year’s Pride Month. The event was held in under the theme “Strength in Solidarity” and featured drag performances by Landa Lakes, Lady Shug, Sage Chanell, and Papi Churro—four Indigenous drag artists representing Chickasaw, Diné (Navajo), Shawnee, Ponca, Otoe, Lakota Sioux, Nahua, and Coahuiltecan ancestry, according to the event web page.
Several drag events were held at the Smithsonian during the Trump administration, including a happy hour at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York featuring Horchata, a co-founder of the annual Brooklyn drag festival; a performance in conjunction with the Smithsonian Latino Museum featuring Big Freedia, a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race, a popular television show in drag culture; and a ball at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden hosted by Pussy Noir, a “local icon” of D.C. drag culture, according to the Smithsonian website.
Pablo’s View
Smart move by Secretary Bunch. Drag is a paper tiger Republicans are using to gin up anti-queer sentiments in an election year. Queer folk are a huge contingent of Bunch’s workforce, which Bunch has said to be forming a formal working group for LGBTQ employees. This is incredibly forward-thinking for Bunch, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Bunch will appear before the Senate Rules Committee on June 18, a hearing for which he’ll need to come prepared for incendiary culture war questioning from Republicans on the committee. Expect baseless grandstanding from GOP Senators about the threat drag events pose to children, a toxic myth for which there is no basis in reality.
The good news for Bunch is that the anti-queer attacks from the GOP aren’t landing like they used to in the broader public. Senators will gripe, sure, but then they’ll move on — and so will Bunch. Only, instead of being known as the pioneering Black Smithsonian secretary with an anti-gay asterisk on his track record, Bunch will be the guy who gave drag a second thought and did right by his workers and the general public who will continue to enjoy Pride Month at his facilities well into the future.