Advance tickets encouraged. Event tickets include museum admission.
Event begins promptly at 2 p.m. Please arrive 10 minutes before start time to guarantee admission.
Sadie Barnette’s The New Eagle Creek Saloon is an installation that reimagines San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar, opened by the artist’s father, Rodney Barnette, in 1990. Join us for a panel discussion and dance party illuminating the history and legacy of the original New Eagle Creek Saloon, featuring the artist in conversation with her father and Stephen Dorsey, a former patron of the bar. Moderated by Oakland-based journalist Corey Antonio Rose, the panelists will reflect on the bar’s significance as a site of queer community, resistance, and creativity, as well as its enduring impact on the Bay Area cultural landscape.
This afternoon gathering, which kicks off a series of exciting events held within Barnette’s installation, will also feature tunes and stories from BLACK, who started her legendary DJ career at the Eagle Creek.
Drinks will be available for purchase at the bar.
Seating is available at this event. For any other accommodations, please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org 10 days prior to the event, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.
Sadie Barnette’s multimedia practice illuminates her own family history as it mirrors a collective history of repression and resistance in the United States. Barnette has a BFA from CalArts and an MFA from UC San Diego. Her work is in permanent collections, including LACMA, Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Guggenheim, as well as a permanent, site-specific commission at the LAX International Airport, forthcoming in 2024. She lives and works in Oakland, CA and is represented by Jessica Silverman gallery.
Rodney Barnette was born in 1944 in West Medford, MA, one of the oldest African-American communities in the United States. By age 17, his experiences of racism, police brutality, and white supremacy led him to The Fruit of Islam as a follower of Malcolm X. After being drafted and sent to Vietnam, he organized against discrimination in the military, came home to participate in the anti-war movement, and — after drawing connections between the United State’s war abroad and its war against its own African-American population at home — founded the Compton California Chapter of The Black Panthers in 1968. While a college student in San Francisco, Barnette was invited to organize with the National Committee to Free Angela Davis. After her release, he turned his attention to the labor movement, first as a factory worker and later as a union representative. Equally important and always interconnected has been his dedication to family and community. In the early 1990s, he opened the first Black-owned gay bar and nightclub in San Francisco, The New Eagle Creek Saloon, with the help of many of the Barnette brothers, and facilitated a space of progressive dialogue and celebration.
Originally from New Orleans, LA, Stephen Dorsey graduated from Nicholls State University with a B.S. in Biology and from Louisana State University with a Master’s Degree in Library Science. While working as a Government Documents Librarian for the State of Louisiana, Dorsey went back to graduate school and received a Specialist Degree in Medical Science Librarianship. Dorsey arrived in San Francisco in 1989 and worked at UCSF for 20 years. For the past 12 years, Dorsey has worked at SFMOMA, where he is currently Museum Store Assistant Manager.
“BLACK moved to the Bay Area in 1991, with the dream to become a DJ . . . [She] produced great Bay Area’s parties like Tight, Rise, Dream EZ, Hella Gay, and Ships in the Night — some of which are still going on today! All the while, she honed her DJ craft and began playing alongside other DJs including MAW, Fuse, Digit, J Boogie, Rusty Lazer, and Trackademicks. Eventually, she opened for artists including Medusa, Erykah Badu, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Alanis Morissette. She’s taught 15 DJs how to spin and mentored countless others. BLACK has DJed at hundreds of benefits and continues to spin with the same joy that she did when she touched her first records as a young girl.” – The San Francisco Aids Foundation, 2022
Corey Antonio Rose (he/him/his) is a producer, reporter, and host based in Oakland, CA. His work explores the intersections of policy, culture, and public health, from the case for reparations to the mishandling of monkeypox vaccines. His work has been featured on NPR, KQED, KALW, The Commonwealth Club of California, and more. Rose is also a live event producer and host, bringing communities into real-time dialogue with concerts, roundtable discussions, and moderated panels throughout the Bay Area. He is a Facebook Journalism Project Scholar, a co-chair of UC Berkeley’s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, and known as “The Beyoncé of Audio Journalism” at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.