Lavender Literary Society: “Trans History in 99 Objects”
Join us at ICA LA for a Los Angeles-based author talk, presented in partnership with The American LGBTQ+ Museum’s Lavender Literary Society book club, featuring the editors of Trans History in 99 Objects (David Evans Frantz, Christina Linden, and Chris E. Vargas), a groundbreaking publication from the Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art (MOTHA). The book brings together a constellation of artifacts, artworks, and archival materials to illuminate the expansive, often underrecognized histories of trans life across time and place.
Through 99 carefully curated objects—ranging from personal ephemera to cultural touchstones—Frantz, Linden, and Vargas trace narratives of resilience, creativity, resistance, and community, challenging linear understandings of history and instead offering a richly layered, trans-centered approach to storytelling that foregrounds lived experience and collective memory.
This conversation invites audiences to engage with the ways trans histories are preserved, interpreted, and activated in contemporary contexts. Together, we’ll explore how Trans History in 99 Objects expands the archive, honors trans voices, and reimagines the possibilities of historical storytelling through material culture.
This program is realized in conjunction with Vargas’ Reading is Transcendental on view in the ICA LA bathrooms and produced as part of the 2024 Scientia Sexualis exhibition, co-curated by Jennifer Doyle and Jeanne Vaccaro. Reading is Transcendental transforms what is often an overdetermined site of violent surveillance and legislative transphobia into an intergenerational reading room. The wallpaper represents the real-life bookshelves of Vargas’s community, with titles that convey both the wide radius of trans literature and the problem of categorization at large, nodding to the thorny task of unmaking a canon.
The American LGBTQ+ Museum Book Club is a space for community and connection, bridging generations through the magic of storytelling. The selections will be a mix of popular queer history and memoir with inspiring authors and iconic guest facilitators. The pages we turn will become stepping stones for intergenerational dialogue, fostering understanding, empathy, and unity. Together, we’ll traverse the landscapes of queer culture, savoring the nuances and complexities that make our stories uniquely ours. This isn’t just a book club; it’s a movement. Reading together becomes a powerful act of empowerment, a catalyst for change, and a testament to the resilience of the LGBTQ+ spirit. Participants will be a part of something extraordinary. In this book club, we won’t just read, we’ll weave the threads of our stories into a tapestry of strength, resilience, and pride.
Christina Linden’s professional practice spans the fields of museum work, public engagement, and higher education. Throughout, she strives to support social relevance and create platforms and access for underrepresented voices and audiences. She is one of the co-editors of the book Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects, and the Director of Academic and Public Programs at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
David Evans Frantz is a curator based in Los Angeles and Executive Director of the Claire Falkenstein Foundation. His curatorial projects include Millie Wilson: The Museum of Lesbian Dreams; Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art, co-curated with C. Ondine Chavoya; and Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., also co-curated with Chavoya. Most recently, he organized A Queer Arcana: Art, Magic, and Spirit, on view at the Palm Springs Art Museum through October 18, 2026. Frantz is co-editor with Christina Linden and Chris E. Vargas of Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects, a project of the Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art (MOTHA).
Chris E. Vargas is a video maker & interdisciplinary artist currently based in Los Angeles, CA. He is a recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital award, a 2020 John S. Guggenheim fellowship, and in 2024/2025 was a Latinx Artist Fellow. Vargas is the Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art, a critical and conceptual arts & hirstory institution highlighting the contributions of trans art to the cultural and political landscape. He is the co-editor with Christina Linden and David Evans Frantz of the volume Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects (Hirmer, MOTHA, 2024).
Zackary Drucker is an Emmy-nominated director for the HBO documentaries Enigma (2025) & The Stroll (2023), and an Emmy-nominated producer for the docuseries This Is Me (2015). She produced the Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning Amazon show Transparent (2014 – 2019) and the film Biosphere (Duplass Brothers Productions / IFC, 2022). The Lady and The Dale, her 4-part series and directorial debut for television, premiered on HBO in 2021; it was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 2022. The Stroll won a Peabody Award in 2024 and a Special Jury Award: Clarity of Vision at Sundance 2023. Her standalone directorial feature QUEENMAKER: The Making of an It Girl was released on Hulu in May 2023. Enigma debuted at Sundance 2025 and premiered worldwide on HBO in June 2025.
