The Stonewall National Museum, overflowing with LGBTQ+ history, seeks a bigger space

One of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ archives is overflowing with queer history. Literally. CEO Robert Kesten says shelves have been added to every office of the Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library. What’s left over has been shipped to off-site storage units.

As a result, boxes of periodicals and posters may poke out during conference calls, and assembling artwork for an exhibition can require a piecemeal search through South Florida warehouses.

“At this point, we have no choice,” Kesten says. “We really had to do something dramatic. And that meant [to] look for a new space.”

The Fort Lauderdale-based museum recently launched a $40 million capital campaign to move to a new location with a bigger storage capacity. The search for a new spot is ongoing, but museum leaders say it has been undermined by a cancellation of federal and state grants — part of President Donald Trump’s push to defund so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion programming.

The museum has lost up to $125,000 in anticipated grant funding from the federal government and the Florida state government amid anti-DEI efforts, according to The New York Times.

Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library in Fort Lauderdale, Floridacourtesy

The politicization of this funding, at a time when the museum’s operational costs and projected expenses are rising, made it all the more surprising when the museum received grant approval for a historic exhibition to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Kesten says.

“They weren’t going to be giving money to what they considered DEI organizations,” says Kesten. “We figured that there was very little, if anything, that we could do.”

The museum submitted a grant proposal for an exhibition on Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a military strategist who helped organize the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

Von Steuben is believed by many historians to have been gay, according to the museum. He immigrated to the United States from Prussia with few financial resources and limited English proficiency, Kesten says. Later, he was subject to speculation around his sexual orientation.

The museum documented von Steuben’s life and revolutionary work in a recent exhibition at its campus in Fort Lauderdale. Kesten says his story holds meaning today, shedding a light on all that people of different origins and identities can accomplish.

“As we look at a gay man’s contribution to the United States’s revolutionary cause, we are confronted with the history that we face today,” Kesten says. That realization made it feel important for the museum to highlight “how dangerous it is for us now to be sending people away, not knowing what their contributions to this country could be.”

Stonewall Museum CEO Robert Kesten (right) with travel influencer Ravi Roth.courtesy Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library

While the latest exhibition was made possible through public support, Kesten says the one-time contribution does not necessarily reflect wider support for LGBTQ+ historical and cultural programming on the federal or state levels. Even in the grant proposal for the exhibition, the museum had to be “very specific” in scope.

Given current political antagonism toward LGBTQ+ history and community in Florida and the wider United States, Kesten says highlighting queer stories through devoted archival work and museum exhibitions feels all the more crucial. “We have an obligation to remind people of the great contributions our community has made to the world.”

The museum was founded in 1973, and with time became a linchpin in preserving LGBTQ+ material history. Its collection contains pieces that trace back to the riots at the Stonewall Inn, AIDS activism in the 1980s, and present-day legal fights to protect LGBTQ+ rights.

Together, Kesten says these items are representative of the broader ambitions of the archive: to chart out queer history where it has long gone overlooked. At its best, the museum president believes this work can fight anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment on the political level and make everyday trans and queer people feel represented.

“There is a responsibility that we must take on. Because this time in history, the scapegoating, the continual attacks, the legislation is getting worse,” Kesten concludes. “We are being targeted, and the only way to fight back is to say: Look what we do as a community. Look how we contribute.”

Learn more about the Stonewall National Museum and how to contribute at stonewall-museum.org.

This article is part of The Advocate's July-Aug 2026 print issue, on newsstands July 7. Support queer media and subscribe — or download the issue now through Apple News+, Zinio, Nook, or PressReader.