Masks and vaccinations are recommended. Plan your visit
Trans Day of Visibility
Saturday, April 1, 2023 • 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Not a member yet? Join us and get free admission all year long!
Note: Free with museum admission—and it's always free for Daytime members and donors. Just bring your membership card and ID. The Tactile Dome is currently closed.
Celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility together at the Exploratorium! Observed on March 31, this international day of awareness highlights transgender achievements and greatness in response to intentional exclusion of transgender people, voices, and actions in the current societal culture and discourse. Transgender people exist in all corners of the world so it is important to emphasize their value. Today, we feature transgender individuals in STEAM fields, offer cultural and scientific context for transgender experiences, and celebrate the diversity of human expression with programs for all ages.
Transgender Day of Visibility at the Exploratorium is presented by our STARS program (Striving for Trans Inclusion and Anti-Racism in Science Learning).
Live Music
With Tory and the Teasers
Featuring New Voices Bay Area TIGQ Chorus
12:30 and 2:30 p.m.
Bechtel Gallery 3
Come listen to Tory Teasley and her band, Tory and the Teasers, in this special collaboration with the New Voices Bay Area TIGQ Chorus! They’ll have you dancing, swaying, and swooning to jazz, soul, funk, and pop.
Tory Teasley describes her sound as “eclectic with jazz roots.” In addition to a list of accolades, Tory often performs at UC Berkeley with Oakadelic, carries an artist residency with the Queer Arts Center, and has opened for both Mayor London Breed at SF City Hall and Grammy-winning artist Fantastic Negrito.
New Voices Bay Area TIGQ Chorus is a mixed-voice choral ensemble for singers who self-identify as transgender, intersex, or genderqueer (TIGQ).
Drag Story Hour
With Per Sia
11:00 a.m.
Plaza
Delight in stories shared by Trans Drag Queen PerSia. She’ll take you on an enchanted tour that celebrates a rainbow of diversity, fun, and the unique value and worth each of us possesses. For children and their families.
Pronoun Stickers
With the Explainers
10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
Crossroads
Share your pronouns with style! Our fabulous Explainers will have a variety of pronoun stickers on hand for you to choose from. Wear your sticker proudly to let everyone know about you and to help normalize introducing your full self to everyone you meet.
Gender Euphoria Wall
With the Explainers
11:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Bechtel Gallery 3
Show us what makes you feel comfortable in your skin! Take a picture of your fresh haircut, new shoes, fancy earrings, stunning arms, or whatever else makes you, you. Show the world what you love about yourself! Let’s take this moment to embrace what we love about ourselves, instead of picking at what we don’t. The Explainers will help showcase your best you!
Still Lives, a Trans Portrait Project
By Eamon McGivern
10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Osher Gallery 1
Still Lives, a Trans Portrait Project is a series of portraits of transgender people in the Bay Area by San Francisco–based figurative painter Eamon McGivern. Today, engage with four paintings from this series, which centers the quiet beauty, dignity, and simple humanity of trans people living their lives in the face of anti-trans hate and legislation in the United States. Two of the four works are taken from a series of paintings supported by a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.
Still Lives: Panel Discussion
With Sathya Baskaran, Ky Lea Albert, Harlowe Donte, Ray Lockhart, and Xòchitl Márquez
1:30 p.m.
Osher Gallery 1, Kanbar Forum
Join us for a panel discussion with the subjects of Eamon McGivern’s Still Lives, a Trans Portrait Project. They’ll reflect on their experiences being represented in the artwork, and share what visibility means for them and their communities. Moderated by Sal Alper, Exploratorium Program Manager and Director of STARS (Striving for Trans Inclusion and Anti-Racism in Science Learning).
Storytime Science
With Gwen Payne
Noon and 2:00 p.m.
Osher Gallery 1
Join STARS Facilitator Gwen Payne for a storybook read-aloud followed by a hands-on activity geared toward children (and their grown-ups). To honor Trans Day of Visibility, Gwen will read from I'm Not A Girl: A Transgender Story by Maddox Lyons and Jessica Verdi. After the story, participants can use stickers that depict clothes, hair, eyes, and mouths to make paper-doll versions of themselves or possible selves.
STARS stands for “Striving for Trans Inclusion and Anti-Racism in Science Learning.” The Exploratorium’s STARS program provides audiences with experiences that center excluded identities in STEAM and education fields.
LYRIC
11:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
Crossroads
Learn more about San Francisco–based youth resource and education center LYRIC. LYRIC’s mission is to build community and inspire positive social change through education enhancement, career trainings, health promotion, and leadership development with LGBTQQ youth, their families, and allies of all races, classes, genders, and abilities.
Compton’s Transgender Cultural District
11:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
Crossroads
Learn more about the first legally recognized transgender district in the world. Compton’s Transgender Cultural District’s mission is to create an urban environment that fosters the rich history, culture, legacy, and empowerment of transgender people and its deep roots in the southeastern Tenderloin neighborhood. The transgender district aims to stabilize and economically empower the transgender community through ownership of homes, businesses, historic and cultural sites, and safe community spaces.
