Queen for a Millennium

This crown was made to honor Marsha P. Johnson. Black trans woman, drag mother, tireless caregiver, and a central figure in the Stonewall uprising that ignited the modern movement for queer liberation. Around a photographic portrait of a classical figure, glass flowers bloom in every direction: daisies, blossoms in blue and orange and red, a scrolling curl of clear glass. It is exuberant, unruly, and radiant, a crown for someone the world tried never to crown at all. It was not made alone. During a residency at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Tate invited LGBTQ+ students from a local high school to collaborate. The young people learned about Marsha's life, then made flowers of their own and carried them over to be attached hot. Their hands are in this crown. Their futures are the reason it exists.

Marsha called herself many things and let the "P" stand for "Pay It No Mind." Queen for a Millennium pays her the opposite: full attention, lasting honor, a crown built to outlast the century, passed now from one generation of trans lives to the next, hand to hand, flower by flower.