London's dedicated LGBTQ+ museum is back - and it's queerer than ever

Queer Britain reopened after a two-month refurbishment timed to coincide with LGBTQ+ History Month in King's Cross. The museum remains in its May 2022 physical location while presenting renovated gallery spaces, newly acquired objects and a reworked five-room showcase. Exhibits include posters tracing 40 years of BFI Flare's marketing and other artefacts prompted by a mounted question inviting reflection on objects from queer past, present or future. Staff completed finishing touches and awaited final deliveries ahead of a reception. Joseph Galliano-Doig framed the space as the organisation's first physical museum and a step toward larger, permanent venues.

"This is the welcoming thought posed to me as I arrive at the UK's national LGBTQ+ museum on a nippy day in February - the month dedicated to LGBTQ+ history in the UK. The question stays on my mind as I turn to face an adjacent display of posters spanning 40 years of BFI Flare's marketing, the trailblazing film festival that launched in 1986 as a small season of films at the National Film Theatre"

"It's been more than two years since I spoke with Joseph Galliano-Doig, Queer Britain's co-founder, about the project's conception and his hopes for the future. "This is our first physical space. This is where we learn how to be a museum. And over the next five to 10 years, we're working towards building bigger spaces, more permanently screwed into the cultural landscape", Joseph said in June 2023."

Read at CN Traveller