Artifacts:
Buttons, t-shirt, and ephemera from the Pam Elam collection 

Where to find them: 
New York Discoveries 

Pam Elam is an LGBTQ+ rights and feminist activist from New York City. In 2019, she gifted the museum a collection of shirts, buttons, and ephemera related to LGBTQ+ political work, women’s sports, and lesbian representation in popular culture. In 1984, Elam worked to form “Lesbians in City Government” to promote and support lesbian representation in New York City government. Elam also served on the campaigns of both Deborah Glick (the first openly gay legislator in New York) and Tom Duane (the first openly gay and openly HIV-positive member of the New York State Senate) at the state level. 

Elam’s collection includes artifacts that document activism and LGBTQ+ community events, including the 1993 March on Washington, the NAMES Project AIDS quilt, Broadway Cares, and the Gay Games IV (held in New York City in 1994). Elam collected posters, tickets, and playbills related to lesbian visibility in theater productions and on film and television, including productions by Lily Tomlin and Jane Chambers’s play “Last Summer at Bluefish Cove.” Elam’s collection includes tickets and programs from women’s tennis matches in New York City, and from the WNBA New York Liberty (these represent some of the first artifacts from professional women’s sports in the New York State Museum’s collection!).