Far from the national lockdowns proving an obstacle, the inevitable shift to digital events helped: it was easier to get 500 people on a Zoom call than crammed into a room. Thanks to the efforts of its patron ambassador Carolyn Ward donations began to pour in. Relationships were quickly built with the culture sector – such as the Tate and National Trust – as well as partnerships with the likes of M&C Saatchi “to help us develop our strategic outlook”. As a former editor of Gay Times, he tapped into his extensive connections with LGBTQ+ organisations and queer activists and artists, and when he spoke to potential funders, Galliano met constant astonishment that such a museum did not already exist or even been attempted in its own right before. In 2017, its director Joseph Galliano visited the Queer British Art exhibition at Tate Britain and “realised you could create a blockbuster exhibition around queer subjects”. Launching a museum is an ambitious endeavour, and Queer Britain has come together with impressive speed. Its opening is an important milestone for a minority that has only enjoyed widespread public acceptance and significant legal protections for the briefest of periods, and is, in a sense, still blinking, slightly dazed, in the light.
Opening its doors to the public on 5 May, the space is ideally situated in King’s Cross, both for Londoners and for those visiting the capital by rail. So this really is an opportune moment to launch what is, astonishingly, Britain’s first ever national LGBTQ+ museum, established by the charity Queer Britain. Trailblazing Labour MP Maureen Colquhoun with the Gay Defence Committee in 1977. Nevertheless, in this period LGBTQ+ people flourished culturally and artistically, while from the 90s onwards, hostile public attitudes crumbled precipitously as anti-gay laws were struck from statute books. The 1980s HIV/Aids pandemic, ravaged a generation of gay and bisexual men, attitudes towards gay people hardened and a moral panic culminated in the passing of section 28, banning the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools: the first anti-gay legislation passed since 1885. “Let me remind them that no amount of legislation will prevent homosexuals from being the subject of dislike and derision, or at best of pity,”Īfter the Sexual Offences Act was passed in 1967, convictions of gay men for gross indecency actually increased, and gay people were still characterised as would-be sexual predators and threats to children. “Lest the opponents of the new bill think that a new freedom, a new privileged class has been created,” he declared. When Lord Arran co-sponsored the bill that ended the total criminalisation of same-sex relations between men – after his gay brother had killed himself – his preamble was bleak. I t is little over half a century since homosexuality was partially decriminalised in England and Wales, and it’s a period defined by both progress and trauma.