The Leather Archives & Museum in Rogers Park has broken ground on a $2.2 million renovation that will expand the museum’s gallery space and create an ADA-compliant entrance. The renovations will also include a community event space and upgrades to the museum’s archives with climate controls and additional storage.

Renovation Details

The museum will update its interior with furnishings evocative of kink and fetish culture. The facility will be closed through the duration of the renovation project, which is set to be completed in May.

The museum’s executive director, Gary Wasdin, said the renovation is a significant step forward for the organization. “It’s an amazing place, and no one who comes in there leaves without being impressed with this history and the fact that this history is saved,” Wasdin said.

The museum was founded in 1991 by Chicago gay activist Chuck Renslow and has since become a hub for the kink and fetish communities. The museum’s board began discussing renovations in 2001, but it wasn’t until Wasdin joined the museum in 2018 that the project gained momentum.

The museum hired Chicago-based Space Architects + Planners to handle the redesign in 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic put the work on pause. Plans resumed in 2025, and the museum is now moving forward with the renovation.

The museum will continue to host monthly programs during the closure, though they will be off-campus. Those programs include kink education classes, gear night socials, and fetish figure drawing classes at Chicago’s LGBTQ+ archive, Gerber Hart Library.

Original reporting: Block Club Chicago — read the source article.