Midlands Art Papers 8 (2025)
DOI: 10.25500/map.bham.00000008
Midlands Art Papers is a collaborative online journal, working between the University of Birmingham and 13 partner institutions to research and explore the world class works of art and design in public collections across the Midlands.
Introduction: Queer Work in Museums and Galleries in the Midlands
IntroductionThe editor of this year’s issue of Midlands Art Papers introduces its focus on queer work in museums and galleries in the Midlands. He reflects on the exhibitions, initiatives, and networks that have emerged in recent years and increased the visibility of queer practices at a national level, while also tracing the precise histories of queer work in institutions in the region.
Positive Leicester
Telling Histories of HIV/AIDS at Leicester Museum And Art Gallery
Positive LeicesterThe exhibition Positive Leicester took place at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery between November 2022 and January 2023. In this conversation, Catherine Hallsworth and Jonathan Raynor reflect on the process of creating the exhibition and its impact on the museum’s relationship to LGBTQ audiences.
The Collections Community Panel at New Art Gallery Walsall
Here, Queer, and Beyond
The Collections Community PanelThe New Art Gallery Walsall’s Collections Community Panel was formed in 2021. It is made up of local people with a range of lived experiences who help the gallery reflect and represent the people of Walsall. This conversation between panel members reflects on their experiences on the panel and how queer perspectives and experiences have shaped their work on it.
Nature’s Queer Blueprint
Art, Identity, and Ecological Kinship
Nature’s Queer BlueprintIn recent years, researchers, activists, and museum and gallery workers have embraced the relationship between the natural word and queer experiences. In this article, sophia moffa outlines some approaches from queer ecology and explores how they have shaped their art-based community practices with LGBTQ+ communities in the Midlands.
Uncovering Queer Collections in Birmingham Museums Trust
Uncovering Queer CollectionsNatasha Booth-Johnson reflects on her work producing a survey of objects of ‘queer significance’ for the collections at Birmingham Museums Trust in late 2023. A survey of this nature has been an increasingly common strategy employed by museums and galleries as a way of identifying objects in their collections that can be used to engage LGBTQ+ audiences.
The Radev Collection: Modern Art and Chosen Family
The Radev CollectionThe Radev Collection is an art collection built over three generations by three gay men – writer Edward Sackville-West, critic and gallerist Eardley Knollys, and refugee picture framer Mattei Radev. In this conversation, Norman Coates, Radev’s partner and custodian of the collection, speaks with Emalee Beddoes, who curated an exhibition of the collection titled Radev in her former role at The Wilson in Cheltenham.
Cissies Looking at Phosphenes
John Yeadon’s Modern Art, Disco Drawing, perception, and ‘gay art’ in the early 1980s
Cissies Looking at PhosphenesArt historian Gregory Salter examines John Yeadon’s Modern Art, Disco Drawing, 1982, which depicts a group of figures in a gay disco, on the cusp of the HIV/AIDS crisis. He explores the artwork’s playful approach to perception and its unsteady relationship to left wing politics and the category of ‘gay art’.
Would you recognise a queer world?
The transformative power of Suzanne Treister’s Q: Would you recognise a Virtual Paradise? Entering the Kitchen No.1, 1995
Would you recognise a queer world?Zheyu Lin explores the fantastical and kitsch interior of Suzanne Treister’s Q: Would you recognise a Virtual Paradise? Entering the Kitchen No.1, 1995, at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. She traces how Treister combined the home of King Ludwig II of Bavaria with references to 1970s and 1980s British pop music and early experiments with videogame art to envision a transformative queer world.