London — “It feels like a religious object,” said director Joseph Galliano Doig Queer Britainhere is the new museum, pointing to the heavy oak doors in the main exhibition room.
Painted in an addictive mustard color and studded with steel rivets, the door also had a small peephole for the guards to peer through. “This is why Oscar Wilde was martyred,” said Galliano Doig. From 1895 until 1897, Wilde was imprisoned for sodomy, tarnishing his reputation. He died three years later in exile and poverty at the age of 46.
The object approached Queer Britain’s first exhibition and was a stark reminder of the dangers and taboos of being gay that were expressed 100 years ago. But Galliano-Doig also sees it as representing “the door that was kicked down and led to all the joys we see here”, telling the story of LGBTQ Britons’ slow journey to equality over the past century. He spoke while pointing to a nearby relic. .
Queer Britain, located near King’s Cross Station in London, is the UK’s first LGBTQ museum. an international network of archives, Shureth Museum Berlin and American LGBTQ+ Museum, scheduled to open in New York in 2026. At a time when public discourse on issues such as transgender rights has a profound impact on the lives of LGBTQ people, the directors of such institutions have carefully considered how to frame queer histories. We came to different conclusions about how best to institutionalize these radical movements of the marginalized.
In less than five years, Queer Britain has grown from concept to brick-and-mortar store, spearheaded by Galliano Doig, former editor of Gay Times magazine, and with a diverse group of board members and councilors. The museum’s first exhibition, which is free to enter, celebrates his 50th anniversary from the first London Pride Parade in 1972.
The walls display political paraphernalia illustrating the struggle for LGBTQ rights in the UK, including notes from the first parliamentary session on AIDS and banners for this year’s Trans + Pride parade, held 10 days before the exhibition opened. was included. Other exhibits spotlight key figures in his local LGBTQ activism, as well as famous British figures such as Ian McKellen, Elton John, Derek Jarman and Virginia Woolf.
One of the most impressive exhibits shows the rainbow hijabs worn in 2005 by representatives of LGBTQ Muslim organizations. Iman The group gave a defiant speech to London Pride after members said they had experienced Islamophobic Slander from other marchers. While many of the museum’s objects symbolized triumphs of LGBTQ rights belonging to the past, these garments sparked ongoing and complex debates about Islam and sexuality.
Galliano-Doig wanted to create a museum that represented diverse queer experiences and where visitors not only saw but felt watched, he said. It wasn’t uncommon for me to come here and burst into tears,” he said. “Much of the history of LGBTQ+ people has been about erasure. For us this is saying we are here and our story deserves to be told.”
An early precedent for Queer Britain was the institutions that opened in the 1980s in response to the AIDS crisis. “People started to get sick and die, so there was a sudden need to document these histories that seemed to be rapidly disappearing.”bad gay” Podcast, in a recent video interview.This led to the establishment of GLBT Historical Society It was held in 1985 at the Schwules Museum in San Francisco and Berlin.
About being transgender in America
These spaces tend to focus on local history. The Schwules Museum, noting that Berlin was where the term “homosexual” was first coined, now hosts an exhibition about the squatting of famous gay activists in the city called Berlin. TuntenhausThe IHLIA LGBTI Heritage Archive in Amsterdam has collections representing over 150 countries, but also regularly publishes oral histories of older LGBTQ people in the Netherlands.
Queer Britain is just one wave of new LGBTQ institutions in London. “We are still figuring out how we fit in with other queer spaces. queer circle and the LGBTQ+ Community Centersaid Dawn Hoskin, curator of the exhibition. His shift from primarily academic archives such as his IHLIA and London’s Bishopsgate Institute to a showcase of LGBTQ history for the general public has seen new books, podcasts, and even “The Book of Queer.” A historical series of Discovery+ called.
Why is queerness so popular now? “People who were part of the early wave of the recent queer liberation movement are entering a period of thinking about heritage and what the future of the movement might look like. LGBTQ+ Museum. “There are a lot of people who have moved out of the whitewashed moments of activism and into a more reflective space.”
Galliano-Doig points to improved visibility. “More people are coming out these days,” he said. “It’s compulsive to recognize that we are embedded in the community.” was done. This also means more support and funding will be available for professional institutions like these museums.
Organizations like Queer Britain have a lot to celebrate, but the triumph of LGBTQ rights is only part of the story. In many countries around the world, like Oscar Wilde, people of different genders and sexualities – physically, socially and psychologically – are still locked behind doors. Same-sex relationships are still criminalized in some 70 countries, and women and people of color are still marginalized within her LGBTQ community. In a recent speech at Trans + Pride in London, actress Abigail Her Thorne said “both legally and politically” that trans people in the UK “are not allowed to control their lives.” It is not.
Even visible progress is complicated. Different groups under the LGBTQ umbrella have different legal rights, which are often not always guaranteed. This is evident in Justice Clarence Thomas’ recent push in the US House of Representatives to codify protections for same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court should “reconsider” past decisions. How should museums represent such vivid and politically entangled issues?
Existing spaces take different approaches to balancing political statements with celebrating diverse genders and sexualities. Galliano-Doig calls Queer Britain a “queer-run space for all,” meaning it conveys one message to both LGBTQ and straight audiences, but the director of the Suures Museum Society member Birgit Bosold said that Queer Britain should instead “dualize its role: advocate to mainstream audiences the recognition of queer heritage as part of our collective history, and to address the issues that dominate within the queer community.” To object to a statement.
Berlin’s museum does this in part by spotlighting marginalized groups within the LGBTQ community. A recent exhibition focusing on intersex people and another on queerness and disability open his September. Bosold said these projects are beginning to address historical biases in the broader culture and the museum itself. She said it acted as if it was run exclusively by gay men.
Mr. Miller, who is also a member of the Schwules board of directors, said: “We don’t want to be the place where people receive an undigested version of queer history.
Garcia plans to turn America’s LGBTQ+ museum into a space that engages visitors and teaches them about history. “As gay people working in queer organizations, our lives are inherently political and controversial,” he said. “Our movement must advance and oppose traditional institutions both within and without them. It’s a museum that we also look at as part of it.”
Queer Britain’s opening exhibition felt more cautious than Suureth’s overt political stance, but that’s probably just the starting point. We’re trying to understand what it’s going to be like,” Hoskin said. According to Galliano Doig, the team will evolve as it listens to the community and finds its voice and identity as an organization. If all goes according to plan, we plan to move to an even larger space within five years.
As they continue to grow, how these museums decide to present LGBTQ history remains an urgent question. It was,” said Hugh Remy, Miller’s co-host on the Bad Gays podcast. “Museums are not independent reporters of the past. They are part of an ongoing process of identity formation, so the stakes are very high.”
