Jean Dolin, a Haitian immigrant who was raised in Dorchester, is the person behind Boston LGBTQ+ Museum of Art, History & Culture. Dolin came up with the notion for the traveling museum in 2020 after years of working in politics and journalism.
“I emerged out of Covid wanting to do the thing that moves me, the thing that I feel like would inspire, would inform, but would also empower,” Dolin said.
“And then something kind of sparked,” he said.
Inspired by a photography exhibition he’d seen in the streets of Boston, he created “Portraits of Pride,” which is now in its fourth round. The latest iteration of the exhibit, featuring 10-foot-tall portrait banners of people who have stood out in their communities, is now installed at the Connector/Winthrop Center Park.
It includes 20 portraits, photographed by John Huet, including Gretchen Van Ness, executive director of LGBTQ Senior Housing, Paul Glass and Charles Evans, founders of LGBTQ+ Elders of Color, and Jerome Smith, a Dorchester resident who is the senior manager of external affairs at Amazon and Boston’s former chief of civic engagement.
On June 11, the museum opened a new show, a collaboration between the two artistically renowned cousins, Paul Firmin, a queer Haitian artist widely known as KINI, and Rejeila Firmin, the exhibition’s curator, as the artist in residence. The presentation is at the Pryde Gallery, at 59 Harvard Ave. in Hyde Park.
“I think I’m also excited that this is a Haitian queer artist that is doing it,” Dolin said. “There is a very long history of homophobia in Haiti. So that’s easy for these two identities to be held in one body.”
The exhibition will be up until mid-September, and then will be followed by another, Dolin said.
The museum’s 2026 project is still in the works, but there are plans to have a commemoration of the 250th birthday of the United States in the spring, and then travel with it across the state in 2027 and 2028.
“So, at that point, we’re going to be evolving the name of the institution from Boston LGBTQ to Massachusetts LGBTQ,” Dolin said, “because ultimately, we’re telling the history of the state, and we want to evolve into a statewide institution.”