In honor of Black History Month, WayOut remembers Philadelphia-based author and activist Joseph Beam (1954-1988), who is the subject of two portraits in our current exhibition, Arleen Olshan: The Tangle I’ve Gotten Into, now on view at Imperfect Gallery until February 21st, 2026.

Artists have a long history of making portraits of those close to them—people they know in their communities and social circles. Some of my favorite portraits are those that artists have created of their writer friends (such as Peter Hujar’s portraits of Susan Sontag and Beauford Delaney’s paintings of James Baldwin). These portraits show something that can’t quite be said in words, allowing viewers to interpret the subtlety of gesture and the nuance of expression. Such intimacy is made possible by the artist’s personal relationship and close proximity to the subject. As a result, the finished work presents not only a likeness of an individual, but also a record of the relationship between the artist and subject.

These relationships are the subject of the artwork in Arleen Olshan: The Tangle I’ve Gotten Into, on view until February 21st at Imperfect Gallery. The exhibition contains drawings, paintings, and photographs that honor LGBTQ+ activists, colleagues, friends, artists, authors, and lovers whom Olshan knew and has since lost. Through the proceeds from a recent art sale held in December, the William Way LGBT Community Center recently purchased one of these works: Arleen Olshan’s 1986 photo of Joseph Beam, to be included in our Permanent Art Collection.

Born in Philadelphia in 1954, Joseph Beam was an author, editor, and activist. Olshan shared her memories of Beam in a 2020 interview for The Remembrance Project (where she also remembered Gilbert Foreman, whose portrait is also included in the exhibition).

“I was a co-owner of Giovanni's Room from 1976 to 1986. And he was one of our staff… And he was beautiful. He was fun. He was very smart, and really intelligent. And he kind of took Giovanni's Room by storm, you know? So, he came in and created all kinds of new window displays…. and Joseph was like, "Well, I gotta get paid." And he was absolutely right.”

Beam later recalled his time working there: “More and more each day, as I looked around the well-stocked shelves of Giovanni’s Room… I wondered where was the work of Black gay men.” This realization would shape the direction of Beam’s literary and editorial work in the years that followed. Beam assembled and edited the first anthology of writings by Black gay men, In the Life (1986), motivated by the lack of affirming representations of Black gay men and their marginalization within predominantly white gay spaces.

During this period, his essays and short fiction also appeared in a range of gay newspapers and magazines, including Au Courant, Philadelphia Gay News, and The Advocate. He joined the Executive Committee of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays and became the founding editor of the organization’s journal, Black/Out, first published in 1986. It was this year that Olshan’s photograph of Beam was taken.

During our artist talk on Friday, January 30th, Olshan described the lighting, and how beautiful the beam which illuminated his earring seemed when she took the photograph. His face, with an intense directness and dramatically lit, makes him seem monumental, although the image is only eleven inches wide. Olshan’s photographs (of which there are four others included in the exhibition) are all artfully taken, many of them with a shallow depth of field which softens parts of their face and puts others features in sharp focus. In Beam’s portrait, his nose slightly blurs, as something does when it’s close, positioning us—the viewer—in close proximity to him.

Joseph Beam died in December of 1988 due to complications of HIV/AIDS. Olshan’s painting of Beam was completed after his death, in 1989. It has hung lovingly in her home for 37 years, and is also included in the exhibition.

But Beam’s impact has lived on through those who loved him. Olshan recalled that after his death, “his mother, Dorothy was fabulous. When Joseph passed, she did everything to keep his name in the public eye to honor his intelligence and his work. And in fact, she brought Essex Hemphill, another Black male author, who went into her house to finish Joseph's second book (Brother to Brother, published in 1991), so he had a home while he was finishing that book. They just loved Joseph and took good care of his writing.”

Image: Dorothy Beam and Tyrone Smith holding an AIDS quilt honoring Joseph Beam, Au Courant photographs, John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at the William Way LGBT Community Center

Tyrone Smith was interviewed by PGN to remember Dorothy Beam after she passed away in 2019. He said “She would ask me to go to art galleries in town where she would put out the AIDS quilt she made for Joseph, talking about the devastation of AIDS and HIV in the black community. She would do it not as a teacher or an instructor, but as a black woman sharing her own story.” Keesean Moore, an artist, writer, and current member of our Arts Committee, sent a scan from his time doing research in our Archives, which features Tyrone Smith and Dorothy Beam with Joseph Beam’s AIDS quilt.

In 1984, Beam wrote in Philly Gay News that “Transmitting our stories by word of mouth does not possess archival permanence. Survival is visibility.” It’s this same impulse to preserve queer stories that has motivated Olshan’s artwork.

Olshan writes, “I want to preserve the stories, histories, and joys of LGBTQIA+ communities… We must continue fighting to maintain and secure the freedoms we have today and beyond. We must fight against erasure. For there are histories yet to be written…” Come see these portraits of Joseph Beam, and many others, in Arleen Olshan: The Tangle I’ve Gotten Into at Imperfect Gallery before it closes on February 21st, 2026.

Olshan’s photograph of Joseph Beam will be joined with another work featuring Beam in our Permanent Art Collection, a pencil portrait by Prince Anthony Thomas that was included in our exhibition 19 Portraits: Honoring Black LGBTQ+ Philadelphians last year.

And you can still walk through the same doors Joseph Beam walked through and buy copies of In the Life and Brother to Brother at Giovanni’s Room.

Featured in the Issue 19: February 2026 edition of WayOut, your Philly Queer Arts Publication brought to you by the Arts Committee at the William Way LGBT Community Center. To get our monthly newsletter in your inbox, subscribe here.

Black History Month Feature: Remembering Joseph Beam through Art