SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — On one side of the world, Xiangqi Chen can be punished for her LGBTQ+ activism. But on the other, the activist and artist is lauded as a trailblazer — the architect behind the first of its kind Chinese queer art museum.The irony that she left her home in China and found a public platform for her LGBTQ+ artistic expression in San Francisco’s Chinatown — the country’s oldest — is not lost on her.“Here in San Francisco Chinatown, I still continued my journey and met so many like-minded community members and friends,” Chen told The Associated Press through an interpreter. “It kind of actually encouraged me and gave me lots of strength to do what I know is my mission, my calling.”The OUT Museum opened with a rainbow-ribbon cutting at the end of May — between Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Pride Month. Situated across from the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, the bilingual museum is giving recognition to a demographic that has long felt invisible. It seems like an ideal fit in the progressive city at a time when some cities, states and the federal government are restricting or banning certain LGBTQ+ rights.To start, the museum is only open on Saturdays and is one room with fewer than a dozen artworks by artists from China and the Chinese diaspora. But there is hope to expand the museum’s exhibits and days of operation.