Untold stories - Museums Association

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Untold stories

The experiences of LGBTQ people are missing from many museums, but this is changing
Trevor Thomas was the curator-director of the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery from 1940 to 1946. He started lunchtime concerts in the museum in the summer of 1943, and the following year organised an important exhibition of German Expressionist art that featured works from private collections brought to England for safe-keeping from the Nazis.

But in July 1946 Thomas was dismissed from his post following an appearance in court, where he was charged with a public indecency offence – being gay in 1940s Britain meant losing your job at least, and imprisonment at worst.

More than a decade later, another museum director, John Wolfenden, who was the head of the British Museum between 1969 and 1973, wrote a report that paved the way for the decriminalisation of male homosexuality. It took 10 years for the recommendations in the 1957 Wolfenden Report to become law, but the 1967 Sexual Offences Act was a turning point in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) legal and social history.

As the 50th anniversary of the act app­roaches, it’s an opportunity for museums to not only start preparing for celebrating this landmark ruling, but also to take stock of how they are reflecting and representing LGBTQ lives.

Up to 10% of the UK population is gay, and LGBTQ people can be found in every socioeconomic class and sector of society. So are their histories and lives proportionately reflected in our museums and galleries?

“There’s certainly a growing awareness in the museum world that we have to reflect diversity in all its forms,” says Richard Sandell, the head of museum studies at the University of Leicester. “But it’s an interesting paradox that while museums are perfectly placed because they have the capacity to engage people, in the vast majority of them you will find nothing on the subject.”
 
Sandell concedes that gains have been made in exhibitions, the amending of permanent displays and in collecting policies, but adds that these gains remain a contested issue. “It remains a pressing concern when people are questioning LGBTQ rights every week in the media, whether it’s gay marriage or wedding cake lawsuits, or the twittersphere where homophobia is rife,” Sandell says.

“Institutional support is critical. There are some brilliant examples, such as National Museums Liverpool (NML), where a strong framework for equality and social justice feeds into every aspect of the museum, from collecting to public programming to partnership work.”

NML is the beneficiary of one of five of the Art Fund’s New Collecting Awards, a scheme that target young emerging curators and can help fund acquisitions in areas where collections are lacking.

Charlotte Keenan, the curator of British art at NML, has been awarded £60,000 to develop the Walker Art Gallery’s LGBTQ collections.
 
“It fits well with the work we have done on LGBTQ programming, such as the David Hockney and Catherine Opie exhibitions,” Keenan says. “In the past, a lot of this activity has been focused on one-off events or temporary exhibitions, so this award allows us to put LGBTQ history at the core of our permanent collections long term.”

The New Collecting Award complements a new project, funded through the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, to research, catalogue and put online NML’s LGBTQ holdings. “This means that as well as supporting a wide range of historic and contemporary work and meeting artists, we will also be able to look at cataloguing and aspects such as how to ensure appropriateness and sensitivity around terminology,” Keenan says. “Not all artists want to be identified as LGBTQ, and we now have the time to look at our collecting policy long term.”

Social history benefits

The acquisitions won’t necessarily be by LGBTQ artists or feature LGBTQ sitters, Keenan says, but could be works that allow an exploration of other aspects of this area of history and culture.

“I’m interested in researching historic representations of witches and witchcraft further because of their significance in the discourse of female sexuality and gender,” says Keenan. “The award also means we can take our research a step further by acknowledging that there isn’t one single, straightforward art historical narrative.”

There are benefits for social history as well – Keenan has been talking to gay artists about their experiences to understand more about their history.

“This has been incredibly humbling and moving,” she says. “I have had people say to me that they never thought they’d see this in their lifetime. This is vital acquisition funding at a challenging time. It’s invaluable for my own professional development but, most importantly, it fits with NML’s strong social justice agenda and is a vital step forward towards increased diversity and equality.”

LGBTQ communities could be more proactive in encouraging museums to tell their stories, says Dennis Bradley, the project officer of Leicester LGBTQ Centre, a voluntary organisation that has been in the city for nearly 40 years.
 
“The LGBTQ community punches well above its weight in terms of what we can contribute to the national story,” Bradley says. “But if we do not speak up our voices will not be heard and our experiences will not be recorded.”

Bradley works with the University of Leicester and De Montfort University in the city, as well as East Midlands Oral History Archive and other museums. These include Newarke Houses Museum, a social and military history museum that hosted Leicester LGBTQ Centre’s Untold Stories exhibition in 2014, a long-term project looking at LGBTQ lives from the 1940s to the present.

“Museums provide the vital link between not only sharing history but also societal changes,” Bradley says. “It’s not always an easy thing to do, but having our histories on display – and we’ve had a fantastic response – means that people can see the major changes since the turn of the century, the massive changes of the past 15 years, including the 2010 Equality Act, and the same-sex marriage laws. Twenty years from now it will remain a resource and people can marvel at how things have changed.”

How digital is helping

Building up trust can be a tricky process. Temporary exhibitions and one-off events can look like tokenism, and until LGBTQ stories are embedded in the collecting policies and culture of museums and galleries, the sector will fail to serve a significant proportion of the population.

Developing a digital archive is one way of democratising collecting and has led to a step change in the work of the London Metropolitan Archive (LMA). Speak Out London – Diversity City is an oral history project that has been set up at LMA and is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

“We have 26 volunteers gathering histories, but rather than these going into our tangible archive, we are putting them online,” says Jan Pimblett, the principal development officer at the LMA.

“This extends its reach and means that people can keep their own material.”
The focus is on current material and memorabilia, and aspects of LGBTQ history that are underrepresented or non-existent, such as transgender and bisexual history.

“Before 1970, our LGBTQ archives consisted mainly of medical and court re-­ cords,” Pimblett says. “Current material is important because it counters the critical voices and negative perceptions of the past. It allows people to speak for themselves.”

Fear of bad press and alienating members, donors or visitors who might be offended by these topics can make some museums and galleries reluctant to represent LGBTQ communities.
 
“It’s true that in many workplaces there is either fear or fatigue on the diversity agenda – or both,” says Richard McKenna, the director of Inclusive Employers, a London-based company that helps organisations develop inclusive workplaces.

“Museums are no exception, but they have a particular opportunity to attract diverse talent – because of their social and education programmes, museums can access, represent and empower audiences and visitors that reflect all community, cultural and heritage differences.
 
“Inclusion is about everyone – every visitor, but also every colleague. If staff are not working in cultures that are interested in difference, then how can we expect them to engage with a diverse audience?”

McKenna adds: “If museums don’t take an inclusive approach to communities we will see a shift backwards towards attracting just certain segments of society.”

Mapping LGBTQ histories

A nondescript building on the corner of Bramerton Street and the King’s Road in Chelsea was the centre of lesbian life in London for more than 50 years. But apart from its appearance in the 1968 film The Killing of Sister George, there is virtually no record of its history.
 
This building, and many others that hold both untold and public LGBTQ histories, will soon be celebrated in Pride of Place, an online mapping and research project by Historic England and Leeds Beckett University’s Centre for Culture and the Arts.
 
“It’s an important part of our national history that has never been thoroughly researched,” says Rosie Sherrington, a social inclusion and diversity adviser at Historic England.
 
“Pride of Place provides an opportunity to tell more diverse stories and use a contemporary lens to highlight the range of buildings and places and the role LGBTQ communities have played in them throughout history.

"Stories ranging from Hadrian in Roman Britain to Oscar Wilde at Reading Gaol, from Anne Lister at Shibden Hall in Halifax to Alan Turing at Bletchley Park, give the public more of an understanding that these histories are important, and how society has become more accepting. It’s unlikely we could have done this project 10 years ago.”
 
Sherrington adds that the initiative has had such an impact that it could result in some buildings being listed. Over the course of the 18-month project, people will be able to add their locations and stories to the Pride of Place map, and a timeline and online exhibition will be on the Historic England website by autumn 2016.

Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist


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