Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here?

The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a surge in transphobic attacks online. Less than two months later, New Zealand First announced its bathroom bill, targeting trans people for using gendered bathrooms that don’t align with their assigned sex at birth. 

In March 2024, Destiny Church members vandalised rainbow-painted street crossings at the request of leader Brian Tamaki in purported protest of “rainbow-washing”, and in recent weeks, Tamaki has threatened drag artists involved in library Drag Storytime sessions, instructing his male members to “shut it down” if the sessions went ahead. So it’s no wonder that queer people, particularly trans women, feel at a loss for spaces to connect with their communities. 

A permanent establishment prioritising lesbians, queer women and other sapphic gender minorities has been a long-held dream for many in the community. Especially since the pandemic, lesbians have been craving connection, inspiration and everything else that comes with the curation of a physical community space. And the Charlotte Museum Te Whare Takatāpui-Wāhine o Aoteaora seems to have answered the call. Movie nights, live performances, exhibitions, speed dating and guest panels are among the museum’s many offerings. While focused on lesbian culture, these events are open to all queer folk and allies.

The Charlotte Museum is located at the top of Howe Street, sitting comfortably on the sloped fringes of Karangahape Road – a strip in central Tāmaki Makaurau famous for its queer, eclectic grit. You could call its location poetic, like an intentional line had been drawn between the flashy, commercial, rainbow venues of Karangahape and the museum, but in reality, it was an economic decision, museum coordinator Sarah Buxton tells me. The Charlotte Museum, in its 17th year, has found its fourth venue; their last address was a New Lynn industrial lot. “We were not really accessible and not really very visible,” Buxton recalls. “We had a group of men arrive one Sunday and thought they were coming to a brothel.”

The lore of Karangahape as our unofficial queer hub is somewhat romanticised; borne out of necessity more than anything. “We all love this idea about K Road being the queer zone where our history is – and to a certain extent, it absolutely is, and it’s fabulous – but our actual real roots around the queer community space and party zone [are in] Auckland downtown and Fort Street,” Buxton explains. “So we were forced up into K Road late 80s, early 90s because downtown became too expensive. And they didn’t want clubs down there anymore. They wanted shops and commercial spaces.”

So underground venues moved above ground, and what was communal eventually became commercial, too. Many lesbian and queer spots that operated at a loss were forced to close, while others moved uptown. However, when Karangahape also fell victim to gentrification and rent hikes, operators shifted their focus to prioritise the demographic that generated the most income at the time: cis Pākehā men. Rainbow venues in the inner city have also been at the centre of allegations of harassment, drugging and sexual assault (among others), making them spaces many in the community would rather avoid. 

Enter the Charlotte Museum. Beginning as an archival group in the early 2000s, the founding members and their friends started documenting their experiences as lesbians in Aotearoa. These records were compiled and sent to Kawe Mahara Queer Archives Aotearoa in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, formerly known as Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand. However, when physical donations were attempted, such as artist Dr. Miriam Saphira’s T-shirt quilt and her iconic badge collection, they were turned away. 

At the time, Kawe Mahara only accepted documentation and didn’t have the capacity to care for the artefacts, so Saphira and her items were sent back to Tāmaki Makaurau. Without a space for lesbian and sapphic ephemera and resources to be looked after, The Charlotte Museum was born, opening its first premises in 2008. 

Buxton and I are chatting in the museum on a Wednesday afternoon. Two Maritime Museum employees are in the main gallery, coming to the end of nine weeks of digital archiving mahi, cataloguing The Charlotte Museum’s thousands of items. It’s a massive undertaking, but one that neither group takes lightly. The pair operate with the utmost care as they handle it all; while they may not fully understand the cultural significance of the items they’re photographing, everyone here knows that we are standing in the world’s only lesbian museum.

While Buxton acknowledges the Charlotte Museum is at the “more lowkey end of the spectrum” compared to other queer spaces, she says the response from the public has been overwhelmingly positive. “People are really keen to enjoy the space and want to be here, when they find out about us,” Buxton says. “People get really excited and they want to be involved and they want to be connected.” 

When I ask Buxton why she thinks the Charlotte Museum Te Whare Takatāpui-Wāhine o Aoteaora is the only lesbian museum in the world, she doesn’t hesitate to answer. “There’s several quite significant lesbian archives, and queer museums in the world. But I just think it’s around economic and representative imbalance,” she says. “[If] you’re looking at where the money is and where the influence is, that usually sits with white gay men. And they want to preserve and celebrate their history, and it’s different from us.”

With the reclamation of the word “queer”, as well as our ever-expanding understanding of gender and sexuality, the LGBTQIA+ community itself has thereby widened its definition. Lesbianism is no longer as simple as being a woman who loves women – many within the community identify as non-binary and/or trans, bringing to attention the diverse spectrum of the lesbian experience. 

And as we change, so too do our spaces, Buxton reminds me. “As [the term] queer evolved, we diversified the gender identity spectrum. And so we were like, ‘Oh, cool. We can all be together.’” This is what it feels like to attend an event at the Charlotte Museum – knowing that we can all be together, as queer whānau in spaces that exist outside of nightclubs and alcohol; that aren’t built for a male demographic. “I think that’s why all this talk about ‘space’ has come up,” Buxton points out. “Because people are saying, ‘Actually, I don’t want to go to G.A.Y anymore. I’m done with that, and I want something different.’”

The museum currently survives on lotteries, public funds and private donors. Like all charitable trusts, they’ve suffered at the hands of government cuts, but they’re determined to push on. When it comes to collecting items, Buxton doesn’t turn any donations away in fear of losing any part of our past. “There’s whole sections of histories of queer community in Aotearoa that have been lost because there hasn’t been anywhere for it to be,” she says. “And that’s why this museum exists.”