Denver PrideFest Honors Stonewall

The dome of Denver’s Capitol Building glistens in the afternoon sun, acting as a beacon of hope, as it summons thousands every June to come as they are. As crowds gather in Civic Center Park, the air is carefree, and for a moment, queer folks can experience a break from the tension of the outside world. It’s Pride, where all are welcome.

For generations, queer folks have been targeted and deemed the menaces of society as they’ve been discriminated against, hurt, and even killed. Even as heavy and grim as the current political and social climate can feel, as well as the resounding knowledge of how much work still needs to be done, we take pause this year in remembering how far we really have come. On the backs of our LGBTQ predecessors, we have been granted a glistening hope, and the mere fact that Denver held its 44th annual PrideFest this year is a cause for celebration in itself.

As 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, PrideFest commissioned artist Lonnie Hanzon to create a special instillation in honor of the past generations and as a means to provoke the next generation of movers and shakers in the queer community.

“The thought was to do something that was sort of ripped from the headlines,” said Hanzon. Known for his 23-foot wedding cake protesting marriage equality and the Masterpiece Cake Shop disaster as well as his impactful ode to the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, his work continues to stop crowds and turn heads. After creating art installations for the previous four PrideFests, he took the significance of his fifth years’ rendering to heart and wanted to create something as impactful as the headlines themselves.

“It’s a look at history, moments from the last 50 years, and in some cases even further back, to show the progress and tribulations of the LGBTQ civil rights movement,” he said.

Placed within the central axis of Civic Center Park, the installation, titled Stonewall 50: Progress and Reflection, took a team of creatives and volunteers more than six months to design, construct, and mobilize. More than 104 panels on 48 individual picket signs proudly stand tall from the bases of cement blocks, creating a circle of varying moments in time, each one showcasing headlines about occurrences significant to LGBTQ liberation.

“What I have found fascinating in all this, and I’m a card-carrying gay man, is that so much of this history has been totally new to me, and shocking; some of this stuff is just unbelievable,” Hanzon said.

“Like, when you see that Mississippi was the last state to ratify women’s right to vote, and you see it’s in 1985, you’re shocked.

“Then, you get to see these incredibly powerful moments where a guy in the Army basically destroys his own career by coming out of the closet and causing the beginning of the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell being repealed.”

Some headlines are encouraging, like when Ellen Degeneres came out in 1997 to a national audience on her ABC sitcom Ellen. Others are ones we’d prefer to forget, like Executive Order 10450 in 1953, which determined lesbian and gay federal employees a risk to national security.

“It really shows we have made a lot of progress, and we have a lot more to do,” Hanzon said.

This is where Hanzon offers the reflection piece with 25 panels acting simply as mirrors, beaconing the viewer to look at themselves and ponder the thought that they, too, are a part of the story and the eventual history of the LGBTQ civil rights movement.

“Very often, we think that gay is a modern thing, and it’s not. It goes back millenia; a certain amount of the population has always been queer,” said Hanzon. “For me, it’s embolding to see that the people who came before me had to do much more difficult things than I’m doing. The fact that, as a gay man, I can make art in public and be out, we’ve made some amazing progress.”

As LGBTQ folks continue to strive for equity in all areas and equality for all the letters in the queer community, Hanzon hopes that this piece will remind us that we are all in this together, and we need to show up in this fight to make things easier for every generation.

“I saw a meme the other day that said, ‘I don’t come out for the people that hate me and so that the heterosexual community sees me; I come out for the scared and frightened people in the closet,’” he said. “That is why we come out and stand up.”

Art by Lonnie Hanzon