The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to our upcoming exhibition, Friends of Dorothy’s, curated by Emma Rose Gudewicz. The exhibition will be on display from May 24 - June 29, 2025, and will be free and open to the public. Friends of Dorothy’s examines what it is to be queer today, underscoring the artists’ individual experience with queerness. This exhibition seeks to uplift and highlight LGBTQIA+ voices in an uncertain world.

The exhibition title Friends of Dorothy’s derives from queer slang in the mid-20th century. At a time when homosexuality was criminalized, many queer individuals used coded language to identify one another safely in public. "Are you a friend of Dorothy?" was a discreet inquiry from one queer individual to another that didn’t risk revealing a queer person’s identity to potentially dangerous people. 

Amid the regression of societal acceptance and understanding, we reflect on historical queer communities—their unity and resilience—and how their experiences shape the spaces we create today.