Library Welcomes a New Exhibit in June that Honors the Trans Community
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Aimee Reeder
Communications Manager
Berkeley Public Library
510.495.4175
areeder@berkeleyca.gov
The Berkeley Public Central Library Welcomes a New Exhibit in June that Honors the Trans Community
Berkeley, California (May 21, 2025) – From June 2 to June 28 visit the Central Library to view Transmissions Quilts: A Multimedia Exhibit of Objects, Stories, and Trans Care, curated by Berkeley-based artist and educator Cordy Joan. The exhibit takes place across the Central Library, with art displayed on the 1st, 2nd, and 5th floors.
Attend the opening reception on Monday, June 9th from 5-7pm with a curator talk and a musical program.
Join the curator tour at 12pm on Saturday, June 21st, followed by a community quilting bee from 1-4pm.
Transmissions is an ongoing, multidisciplinary art and community-building project that makes quilts for trans people, primarily based in the Bay Area but with project hubs expanding across the United States. Coinciding with Pride Month 2025, this exhibit centers the creative vitality of trans and queer community, in Berkeley and beyond.
Curator Joan, a recipient of the 2025 City of Berkeley Civic Arts Individual Artist Project Grant, notes, “As the project has grown to involve over 130 collaborators and multiple locations, the impulses remain steadfast: welcome trans people to themselves, shower them with gifts, and offer the reminder that the web of life holds them fiercely.”
Read Joan’s full curator statement and learn more about the project at www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/transmissions-quilts.
“The power of both the material and metaphoric gesture of gifting quilts to trans individuals, made by a simultaneously intimate and expansive community of trans artists, is fully apparent in this exhibit that will be at the Central library,” librarian Jacob Kahn notes. “The Transmission project is conceived around values of listening and care, pillars of Berkeley’s social, cultural, and political identity. Berkeley and the Bay Area have a long history of queer, socially-minded fiber arts practice and this exhibit is a continuation of this vibrant legacy.”
For questions about additional Library events, services, hours and locations, please call (510) 981-6100 or visit the Library’s website www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org.
All Library programs are wheelchair accessible. For questions, to request a sign language interpreter or other accommodations for library events, please call (510) 981-6195 (voice) or (510) 548-1240 (TTY) at least five working days in advance to help ensure availability. Please refrain from wearing scented products to public programs.
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