Scope and arrangement
The John Edward Heys collection covers Heys’ personal life, and role as an active member of the artistic and LGBT communities of New York and Berlin from 1969 to 2008. Materials present include issues of Gay Power, photographs, posters, flyers, publicity materials, periodicals, correspondence, notes, and other writings. This collection contains photographs of Heys and various friends from 1969 to the 1980s. Many of the photographs were taken to promote the newspaper Gay Power.
Postcards, Flyers, Notes and Correspondence provide insight into Heys’ social life and activities in the LGBT communities of New York, and to a lesser extent, Los Angeles and San Francisco, in the 1960s to 1980s and in Berlin, and other European cities from the 1990s to 2008. There are advertisements, postcards, flyers, posters, and programs for plays and other theatrical performance pieces; films and film festivals; musical groups and performances; museums; art and photography exhibitions; restaurants; gay nightclubs, parties and other social events; and safer sex promotions. Many of these promotional materials are in German, French, Russian, and other languages. Often these materials include related correspondence from the artists, and/or friends of Heys recommending the event, such as notes written on the backs of promotional postcards, and letters accompanying promotional flyers.
Periodicals held in this collection include complete magazines, newspapers, and journals, and excerpted articles from 1970 to 2008. Many of the periodicals from 1990 to 2008 are in German, Italian, Danish, and Japanese. Most of these periodicals concern gay issues, drag performance or avant-garde art and performance. Periodicals contained here include adix, Die Andere Welt, Arsenal, Art Forum, Bear, Brutus, Cooking with Verbal Abuse, The East Village Other, Female Impersonator News, Gay Power, Gay Press, The Great Female Mimics, Hinnerk, Homo Décor, Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts, New York, The New York Review of Unnatural Acts, Per Lui, Rags, Sergej, Siegessäule, Straight to Hell, Der Szeneführer durch Berlin, and Zitty.
Arrangement
The collection is divided into three groups: Photographs; Flyers, Postcards, and Posters; and Periodicals.