Family Diversity Exhibits

Details

Biography

Topics

Exhibits

Human Rights

Immigration

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer

Multiculturalism

Programs for High School Students

Family Diversity Projects' award-winning, traveling photo-text exhibits help eliminate prejudice, stereotyping, bullying, and harassment of people who are discriminated against due to sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, race, national origin, religion, and disabilities of all kinds. Several of the exhibits are also available for virtual screenings.

Designed for audiences of all ages, each easy-to-display exhibition consists of ready-to-hang museum-quality framed photographs and are accompanied by age-appropriate laminated text panels. Bring one or more to your college or university, school (K-12), house of worship, workplace, library, museum, corporate headquarters, conference, or community gathering.

Each exhibit comes with approximately 20 photographs. They are all museum quality framed with plexiglas covering, wires on back to hang. Size of each photograph framed is 16 inches by 20 inches. Each exhibit has different configurations of text, but generally each photograph has one or two pieces of long interview text 11 inches by 17 inches (vertical). They are thickly laminated and have string on the back to hang them on walls under or alongside their matching photograph. They can also be placed flat on a table if you use tabletop easels for the photographs, or hung off of floor easels.

Each tells the stories of real people presented in these eight award-winning photo-text exhibits:

Love Makes a Family: Portraits of LGBT People and their Families
Building Bridges: Portraits of Immigrants and Refugees
In Our Family: Portraits of All Kinds of Families
Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and their Families
The Road to Freedom: Portraits of People with Disabilities
We Have Faith: LGBT Clergy, Allied Clergy, and People of Faith Speak Out
Of Many Colors: Portraits of Multiracial Families
Nothing to Hide: Mental Illness in the Family

See descriptions of each exhibit under the Speeches tab.

Peggy Gillespie, the Co-Founder and Director of Family Diversity Projects, is also available to to speak in conjunction with any exhibition. She is the Editor-in-Chief of all of Family Diversity Project’s exhibits and books including Love Makes a Family: Portraits of LGBT People and their Families. Ms. Gillespie has worked as a freelance journalist for the past thirty-five years and has written major feature articles for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and many other magazines. In addition, she is the co-author of Less Stress (Signet) and the autobiography of renowned choreographer/dancer Bill T. Jones entitled Last Night on Earth (Pantheon). A Smith College graduate and a certified social worker, Peggy was the first Assistant Director of Jon Kabat Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program at UMass Medical Center.

Testimonials

"The exhibit was a success beyond our expectations! Students, faculty, families and visitors were gripped by the images and stories."

— Deidre Hamler, Columbus Academy, Gahanna, Ohio

"For the people of our community who were embraced by this exhibit and for the people of our community who were challenged by it. I say thank you for the opportunity to have exhibited Love Makes A Family at Auburn University. The magnitude of this event was unprecedented in Auburn University's history. It was the first GLBT cultural event ever on our campus."

— Barry A. Schreier, Faculty Advisor, Gay and Lesbian Association Auburn University, Alabama

"Thank you for the opportunity to view a powerful expression of truth by many families. May change come from those who have the opportunity to view it."

—Martin Luther King III

"Your photo exhibits are an excellent way to put faces on people we often degrade because they are different. By showing them as people you remove them from the category of 'anonymous abstractions' and cause us to begin dealing with them as the real people they are. As we work to create awareness and understanding of those who are different we value efforts such as yours to bring harmony to an often discordant reality."

— Earl H. Jones, National Education Association (NEA)

“Believers in free speech and other basic American values should welcome this contribution to information about who we are in all of our diversity.”

– Barney Frank, United States Congress, House of Representatives

“In Our Family” is such a wonderful exhibit and we are getting excellent feedback. The photos are in an incredibly well trafficked area – the main “street” of our library, and I constantly see people stopping by and looking and reading the descriptions. I am incredibly pleased and happy this will be up for two weeks instead of just one.”

- Reese Kelly Ph.D., Assistant Dean and LGBTQA Advisor, Dartmouth College

"The quality of LOVE MAKES A FAMILY was beyond our expectations and the range of diversity expressed within the families represented, really made it something that a wide range of people could relate to. I am gratetly looking forward to working with Family Diversity Projects again soon and would recommend this exhibit to everyone!"

- Nicole Chabot, Student Activities and Leadership Development, Wesleyan University

“I am also impressed with the diversity within the exhibit and how you

were able to capture such a variety of people willing to share their experiences. Thank you for working with our college to be able to bring such a valuable resource to our community.”

- Dr. Clement, Mt. Wachusett College, Dean of Students

Speeches

BELOW ARE DESCRIPTIONS OF EACH OF THE EXHBITS

Love Makes a Family: Portraits of LGBTQ People and their Families
Love Makes a Family includes photographs and interviews with families that have lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) members. Through first-person accounts and positive images, this exhibit seeks to challenge and change damaging myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people and their families and helps dismantle homophobia.

Building Bridges: Portraits of Immigrants and Refugees
Building Bridges includes photographs and interviews with people who have come to the United States as immigrants, refugees, or asylum-seekers from all over the world. The exhibit seeks to challenge damaging myths and stereotypes about immigrants and refugees as a way to prevent bullying and hatred towards this group and to help encourage respect and appreciation for this diverse group of people in the United States.

In Our Family: Portraits of All Kinds of Families
What makes a family and how can we open a dialogue about the meaning of family? This exhibit represents a breadth of diversity and family configurations including: adoptive and foster families, divorced and stepfamilies, single parent households, multiracial families, families facing chronic illness, families living with mental and physical disabilities, lesbian and gay-parented families, interfaith families, multigenerational households, and immigrant families.

Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and their Families
Authentic Selves includes the life stories and portraits of trans and nonbinary people from across the United States, as well as their partners, parents, children, siblings, and chosen family members, providing a glimpse into the real lives, both the challenges and the triumphs, of these remarkable people and their families. This exhibit also includes two SpeakOut speakers - D'Lo and Scott Turner Schofield.

The Road to Freedom: Portraits of People with Disabilities
This powerful exhibit documents, through photographs and text of interviews, the experiences, lives, and families of children, teens, and adults whose lives are affected by the full spectrum of physical, sensory, learning, and mental disabilitiess.

We Have Faith: LGBT Clergy, Allied Clergy, and People of Faith Speak Out
This exhibit explores the experiences of LGBTQ clergy and religious and spiritual leaders - including Christians, Jews and Muslims - as they unite their personal stories and histories with their commitment to peace, justice and civil rights through their work in religious establishments of all kinds..

Of Many Colors: Portraits of Multiracial Families
In a world where race is considered by many to be a formidable barrier between people, these twenty families have bridged that divide through interracial relationships and/or adoption. This exhibit of multiracial families has a great deal to teach about racial identity and racism.

Nothing to Hide: Mental Illness in the Family
These compelling accounts demonstrate strength, courage, integrity, and accomplishment in the face of adversity and stigma — giving people living with mental illness and their families an opportunity to come out of the shadows and into the public eye. Nothing to Hide helps dispel harmful stereotypes, myths, and misconceptions about mental illness.

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