Celebrate LGBT Heritage Month in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Sparks and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) are celebrating inclusion and equality during LGBT Pride Month. Join in on the celebration using #WNBAPride. The WNBA is thrilled to unite with players, teams, partners, and fans during Pride Month to amplify shared values of equality, inclusion, and respect. Honoring the WNBA’s diverse community is always a highlight of the season. For more info and tickets, visit the Sparks official website.

One of the original Pride flags flew with the colors of the rainbow, symbolizing the entire spectrum of a hopeful community while recognizing important individual aspects such as Spirit, Serenity, Art, Nature, Sunlight, Healing, Life, and Sexuality. Flags since then added other colors and changed configurations and designs – to be more representative and inclusive of more individuals and people self-identifying in different ways.

Come experience Pride Flag Progress, an educational exhibition at City Hall celebrating the original flags and the later variations created since then to reflect more modern notions and definitions of sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as common interests and aspirations for all LGBT+ people. The free exhibition is now on view in the Bridge Gallery through July 2. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Now on view at Craft Contemporary on Museum Row, On the Inside features a group of 110 portrait drawings by LGBTQ+ artists who are currently incarcerated. In a nation that incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, LGBTQ+ prisoners face a greater risk of physical and sexual victimization. They are more likely to experience assault and abuse by corrections officers as well as other prisoners, and less likely to have support from family and friends on the outside, due to their sexuality or gender identity. Behind bars, their identities are stripped away, and they become just another number in the system.

The art exhibited at On the Inside is made from basic materials the prisoners have access to behind bars - mostly letter-sized paper, dull pencils, ballpoint pen ink tubes (the hard shell is deemed too dangerous), and unlikely innovations such as using an asthma inhaler with Kool-Aid to create an airbrushed painting.

On Wednesday, June 12, join Mayor Eric Garcetti; City Controller Ron Galperin; City Attorney Mike Feuer; Council President Herb J. Wesson, Jr.; Council Members Mitch O’Farrell and Mike Bonin and the Los Angeles City Council; the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA); and the 2019 LGBT Heritage Month Committee to officially commemorate and celebrate the opening of LGBT Heritage Month in the City of Los Angeles. At this presentation in the City Hall Council Chamber, DCA’s 2019 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Heritage Month Calendar and Cultural Guide will be officially unveiled. Los Angeles elected officials will also recognize and honor the 2019 honorees. Breakfast reception in the Rotunda at 8:30am, council presentation at 10am.

The Hollywood Fringe Festival is an annual, open-access, community-derived event celebrating freedom of expression and collaboration in the performing arts community. Each June during the Hollywood Fringe, the arts infiltrate the Hollywood neighborhood: fully equipped theaters, parks, clubs, churches, restaurants and other unexpected places host hundreds of productions by local, national, and international arts companies and independent performers. LGBTQ shows will take place throughout the city of West Hollywood as part of One City One Pride. There are more than 2,000 performances at over 375 different venues. Visit the Hollywood Fringe website for venues, times and pricing.

The West Hollywood Library presents a fun and fabulous Drag Queen Story Hour to celebrate the City of West Hollywood’s One City One Pride. Come enjoy the storytelling and art activity event that has been sweeping the nation. For children of all ages. Drag Queen Story Hour will take place on Saturday, June 22 from 11am to noon. No registration necessary.

Join the City of West Hollywood's Arts Division on Wednesday, June 26, for a screening and talkback of the almost completed documentary LA: A Queer History with director Gregorio Davila. Many consider the Stonewall Riots of 1969 to be the birth of the LGBTQ civil rights movement. But there have been activists, artists and innovators in LA since the turn of the 20th century. LA: A Queer History is an educational, exciting and emotional epic saga spanning nearly a century featuring artists, scholars and first hand accounts from LGBTQ elders who lived it. Free admission, RSVP at Eventbrite.

NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) spotlights LGBTQ+ stories, including the world premiere of director Andrew Guerrero’s first feature film, Come Into Your Own. Taking place at the South Park Center on Saturday, June 29, the festival begins with the shorts program “Make Your Own Magic,” a collection of stories about magic in various forms and creating one's own solutions through determination, from literal magic to healing from mental illness to trying to create a small piece of a long lost better world for a child.

The evening continues with feature film Come Into Your Own, a first feature by filmmaker Andrew Guerrero and a part of InFocus: LGBTQ+ Cinema, which tells a story of the complicated ways that sexual identity can shift and the meaning attached to those shifts. The night concludes with shorts program InFocus: LGBTQ+ Cinema, which takes viewers through a range of queer experiences through metaphor, genre, comedy and unflinching drama. Included are stories of familial acceptance, transition and finding oneself. For more info and tickets, visit the NFMLA website.

Come celebrate Liberace’s 100th with the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection. Taking place at the landmark Central Library on Saturday, June 29, the program will include a special guest speaker, crafts, cake (bring the kids!) rare photos from the archives, slide shows and of course his music. From juke joints to Radio City Music Radio Hall, Liberace always brought artistry and spectacle to his live performances earning himself the well-deserved moniker “Mr. Showmanship.” The event will also explore Liberace’s connection to Los Angeles from his many homes all over our city to being the Honorary Mayor of Sherman Oaks. Lecture & Discussion from 1-2pm; Cake, Crafts & Creativity 2-4pm.