ABOUT THE TRUST
A permanent home for queer cultural legacy.
The Queer Cultural Trust is being built to preserve, steward, and champion the creative legacies of LGBTQ+ artists and writers on behalf of the communities that shaped them. Our goal is to ensure queer culture remains a living, accessible, and generative force that reinvests in the artists and communities who carry it forward.
PLANNED SERVICES
What the Trust will do.
When the Trust launches, its core services will be free to the artists and estates who need them most. Financial resources should never determine whose legacy receives care.
Copyright Directory
Finding the rights holder for a queer creative work can be genuinely difficult. Estates are dispersed, executors change, and the trail can go cold entirely. The Trust is building the first comprehensive directory of copyright contacts for LGBTQ+ artists, writers, and estates, making it easier for publishers, producers, scholars, and anyone who wants to put queer work back into the world to find the person they need to talk to.
Copyright Stewardship
Artists and estates can transfer copyright directly to the Trust, which becomes the permanent steward and beneficiary of the work. The Trust assumes responsibility for keeping it in circulation, fielding permissions inquiries, and collaborating with publishers, agencies, distributors, and galleries to ensure the work remains available and accurately represented. Revenue generated supports the Trust’s mission and is reinvested in the community.
Consulting Services
Navigating copyright law, archival placement, and estate management is complex work, and few resources exist that are tailored to the specific circumstances of LGBTQ+ artists and estates. The Trust will offer free consulting on estate readiness, asset inventories, executor and succession planning, archival placement, and referrals to LGBTQ+-affirming attorneys experienced in estate law and intellectual property.
Community Reinvestment
The Trust is designed to reinvest in the community it serves. Revenue from copyright stewardship, combined with philanthropic support and endowment growth, will fund grants supporting LGBTQ+ artists, archives, publishers, and cultural organizations. The goal is a self-sustaining cycle: queer cultural legacy generating resources that flow back into the community
Launch Timeline
The Queer Cultural Trust is in its founding year. Right now we’re in the process of incorporating as a nonprofit, building a founding board, and establishing the legal and financial infrastructure that makes everything else possible.
In 2027, the Trust will formally launch. We’ll begin offering a range of services, the Copyright Directory will go live as a free public resource, and the Trust will begin working directly with LGBTQ+ artists, writers, and estates.
By 2028, the Trust will be in full operation, offering legacy planning guidance, copyright management, and archival placement services, while beginning to return resources to the community through grants.
FOUNDING DIRECTOR
Dr. Eric Colleary
Eric Colleary has spent more than two decades at the intersection of queer cultural history, archival stewardship, and nonprofit institutional leadership. Since 2015, he has served as the Cline Curator of Theatre and Performing Arts at the Harry Ransom Center, one of the world’s preeminent humanities research libraries, stewarding the creative legacies of queer writers and artists including Radclyffe Hall, Carson McCullers, Terrence McNally, Ethel Waters, Oscar Wilde, and Tennessee Williams. He forged partnerships with institutions ranging from the Morgan Library in New York to the Petit Palais in Paris to the Waseda Theatre Museum in Tokyo. He began his work in queer cultural stewardship at the Tretter Collection of GLBT Studies in Minneapolis. He holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from The University of Texas at Austin.