1952-08-19

BOB BARZAN, raconteur, imaginer, museum and magazine founder, born; Bob was born in Modesto, California and lived and worked in San Francisco when he started a weekly talking circle of Gay men to talk about what at that time he called “Gay spirituality.” He decided that a follow-up newsletter would be a good idea, so he put together White Crane Newsletter and sent it out to the first thirty or so people who had sat in his living room the week prior, asking for a donation of $5 if the readers could offer it. Twenty years later, White Crane was then published by White Crane Institute, and  was distributed in 23 countries and, while the magazine stopped publishing in 2009, the programs and enterprises it created are entering the 29th year of service to the LGBT community.

After stepping down as publisher of the newsletter (and giving what had become a magazine by then to author Toby Johnson) Bob “retired” to Modesto where he immediately set about establishing The Modesto Art Museum, a conceptual art project-without-walls, that continues to this day, and has branched out to include The Modesto Film Festival.