The Catskill Chronicle

Photo courtesy of Robert Giard

LIBERTY, NY (June 17, 2013) – The Liberty Museum and Arts Center explores the multi-faceted life and work of the noted historian and Liberty resident, Allan Bérubé on Saturday, July 6 from 4:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m.

Bérubé’s journey from a working-class, Franco-American youth growing up in a New Jersey trailer park to an influential historian, public intellectual and MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship recipient was marked by a longing to bridge those distances in a search for community. His cherished work as a historian, whether excavating the stories of lesbian women who lived as men in late 19th century San Francisco, revealing the World War II contributions of gay men and women in the award-winning book “Coming Out Under Fire,” helping Senator Ted Kennedy in challenging the ban on gays in the military, or examining the migration of his own family in search of “a usable past,” was partly a paradoxical tool for rooting his own life in a fully-integrated present.

Understanding that uncovering the missing pages in American history, especially as it applied to the lives of gay and lesbian people, was the foundation for any human rights struggle, Bérubé devoted most of his life to this work. “I do my work now in the borderlands between social classes, between the university and the community, between heterosexual and homosexual, between educated speech and down-to-earth talk, between Franco-American and Québécois, between my family and the gay community, between the past and the present,” said Bérubé in his essay, “Intellectual Desire.”

The exhibit follows Bérubé from the post-war years on the family farm in late 1940s Springfield, MA; through his family’s 1950s quest for middle-class respectability living in a Bayonne, NJ trailer park; along the rioting streets of 1968 Chicago where his college roommate was murdered; into the political assertions of 1970s San Francisco’s burgeoning gay community as it confronted right-wing activist Anita Bryant, the assassination of San Francisco Board of Supervisors Member Harvey Milk, and the tragedy of AIDS. It also traces his years as a successful, highly-respected and sought-after author, and finally to a life of kinship, contribution and community-building in Liberty, New York. At the time of his unexpected death in late 2007, Bérubé was working on a history of the “queer, multi-racial, working class” Marine Cooks and Stewards Union.

The exhibit runs from July 4 through August 18 with an opening reception on Saturday, July 6 from 4:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m.

The Liberty Museum and Arts Center is located at 46 South Main Street, Liberty, NY 12754. For more information call 845-292-2394 or e-mail at LibertyNYMuseum@yahoo.com. You can also find info at www.LibertyMuseum.com and on Facebook.