Part of the Gay Chicago Guide — bars, events & things to do.
Chicago, Illinois
Chicago's museum and archive of leather, kink, and fetish history.
The Leather Archives & Museum is the world's foremost collection devoted to leather, kink, BDSM, and fetish history, in Chicago's Rogers Park. It was founded in 1991 by Chuck Renslow — the Chicago figure behind International Mr. Leather — and artist-publisher Tony DeBlase, in part to keep the community's history from being lost during the AIDS crisis; it moved into its current Greenview Avenue home in 1999. Inside you'll find galleries of artwork, vintage gear, club and titleholder memorabilia, reconstructed play spaces, and a research library and archive used by scholars and community members alike. Exhibits treat their subject seriously, as social history rather than spectacle. It's a genuinely one-of-a-kind stop — equal parts museum, archive, and act of preservation — and welcoming to the merely curious as much as to the deeply involved.
Have feedback on this description? Let us knowFree admission Thursdays; 18+ only.
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