Introduction: Queer Work in Museums and Galleries in the Midlands

What does queer work look like in museums and galleries in the Midlands? This issue of Midlands Art Papers brings together just a selection of the exhibitions, displays, and community projects in the region that have addressed LGBTQ+ experiences and histories, and spotlights queer artworks and objects in local museum and gallery collections. ‘Queer’ has become increasingly mainstream as a term in recent years, following its reclamation from a slur by activists and academics at the very end of the 1980s. In the present, it is reasonable to suggest that it has, broadly, two meanings. On the one hand, it has become an identity category in its own right and a kind of umbrella term for a community that encompasses positions like gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and intersex. On the other, it is a disruptive and, in theory, politically radical way of thinking that seeks to deconstruct hierarchies, norms, and binaries. Queer’s contradictions – as something that names an identity category while also having its roots in attempts to undermine the idea of seemingly unchanging, static categories – shape its uses and limitations, as well as the practices of museums and galleries who engage with it.

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the amount of queer work done by museums, galleries, and heritage organisations across the UK. The fiftieth anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales in 2017 was used to instigate several major projects in this area, including Prejudice & Pride: exploring LGBTQ lives at the National Trust, a collaboration between the National Trust and the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester, and Queer British Art 1861-1967, held at Tate Britain and curated by Clare Barlow. [1] These examples are just the most prominent of a host of queer practices across UK museums and galleries, many of which are showcased and linked by the Queer Heritage And Collections Network since its founding in 2020. [2] There are longer-term drivers of this upsurge in queer museum and gallery practice of course, from the repeal of Section 28 in Scotland in 2000 and England and Wales in 2003, which loosened the limitations on local authorities addressing homosexuality; wider legislative change on equality in 2006 and 2010 and civil partnership and same-sex marriage in 2004 and 2013 respectively, which shaped museum and gallery practice and strengthened forms of queer citizenship; the more prominent position of equality and diversity requirements in museum and gallery funding; and the impacts of austerity since 2010, which have curtailed the work of museums and galleries yet arguably enabled forms of community-led practice to flourish, as noted in the previous issue of Midlands Art Papers. [3]

This national context has fundamentally shaped the queer practices of museums and galleries in the Midlands, but we have our own regional histories, contexts, and challenges too. The fiftieth anniversary of partial decriminalisation was marked by the arrival of the National Museums Liverpool and Art Council Collection’s exhibition Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender & Identity at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery at the end of 2017. [4] Birmingham Museums Trust had staged a queer intervention in its own collection a few years earlier, with 2011’s Queering The Museum. [5] A similar relationship between present and near-past shapes the queer work at New Art Gallery Walsall. In 2022, the gallery staged Here&Queer, an exhibition and intervention in the permanent collection that was also the first project in the gallery’s Collections Community Panel. [6] This work built on an exhibition titled Hidden Histories: 20th Century Male Same Sex Lovers in the Visual Arts which had taken place in 2004 and was curated by Michael Petry. [7] Coming only a year after the repeal of Section 28, this important exhibition was subject to censorship by Walsall Council, who requested the removal of several proposed artworks, required that works deemed explicit were shown in a separate room, and edited gallery labels.

This fractious, though ever-shifting relationship between queer practices, local authorities, and audiences has been a presence in the Midlands through the decades. John Yeadon’s Dirty Tricks exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery in 1984 was condemned by local councillors and an editorial in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, though it was also defended; more recently, in 2016 Andrew Moffat’s No Outsiders programme at Birmingham’s Parkfield Community School led to protests by some parents and members of the local community who objected to it on religious grounds. [8] Audiences and public bodies in the Midlands are no more or less open to queer practices in public institutions than anywhere else in the UK. The historical and ongoing work in the region’s museums and galleries, however, are perhaps more reflective of the kinds of challenges, negotiations, and innovations demanded of queer practices in museums and galleries than initiatives staged at national institutions around significant anniversaries and milestones. In the Midlands, these queer practices must work, sensitively, with sexuality’s relationship to class, austerity, disability, religion, and race, shaped by and responsive to the precise histories and communities in the region.

The articles in this issue grapple with the possibilities and challenges of doing queer work in a range of museums and galleries across the region. Some of the articles take the form of conversations and reflections on queer exhibitions and community-led projects. From Leicester Museum And Art Gallery, Catherine Hallsworth and Jonathan Raynor outline the process of creating the exhibition Positive Leicester in 2022, in partnership with Leicester-based charity Trade Sexual Health. It traced the changes in testing, treatment, and public attitudes towards HIV/AIDS over the last forty years, entwining stories from Leicester with national and international responses to the epidemic.

From New Art Gallery Walsall meanwhile, members of the Collections Community Panel, a group of local people who help to shape the gallery’s displays and events, discuss how queer experiences and perspectives have shaped their activities. Their work began with the exhibition and programme Here&Queer in 2022, and has developed to take in themes of class, disability, race, and, most recently, joy. In a further article, artist Sophia Moffa, one of the members of the Collections Community Panel, describes how their own practice and work with LGBTQ+ communities have taken inspiration from queer approaches to the natural world. Each of these articles reflect on how queer work in museums and galleries has made efforts to reach diverse LGBTQ+ communities in the Midlands, drawing on local histories and concerns in the process, while also filtering into the wider practices of the institutions too.

Other articles concentrate on collections-focused research. From Birmingham Museum And Art Gallery, Natasha Booth-Johnson outlines the survey of objects of ‘queer significance’ that she completed for the museum as part of a placement in 2023. Her article explains the parameters that shaped the survey of the collections, shares the results, and reflects on some of the challenges and recommendations that emerged out of it. Surveys of this nature are increasingly common practices in institutions seeking to identify objects in their collection that might speak to LGBTQ+ communities. Queer collections, however, are also formed outside of institutions. One such example is the Radev Collection, which is the focus of a conversation in this issue between Norman Coates, custodian of the collection, and Emalee Beddoes, who curated an exhibition of the collection titled Radev at The Wilson in Cheltenham in 2024. The story of the Radev Collection, formed and passed down by three generations of gay men over the twentieth century, is one shaped by art, chosen family, and the changes in queer life across this period.

Certain ‘queer’ objects, however, might resist or rework the desires of institutions and audiences to frame them in particular ways. A further article, authored by me, takes up this question through an analysis of John Yeadon’s Modern Art, Disco Drawing, 1982, in the collection of the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry. Yeadon has been resistant to the application of the label ‘gay art’ to his work over the years, but still makes sexuality a central reference in his practice. My article explores how Modern Art, Disco Drawing emerged from a convergence of gay identity, left wing politics, and an interrogation of perception that asks pertinent questions of institutions and audiences in search of ‘queer art’ in the present. Similarly, Zheyu Lin explores Suzanne Treister’s painting Q: Would you recognize a Virtual Paradise? Entering the Kitchen No.1, 1995, in the collection at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Responding to Treister’s transformation of the interior of King Ludwig II of Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein castle into a garish and kitsch kitchen, she explores how the painting invites viewers to enter and construct our own queer world. Both artworks solicit their viewers into action and reflection, seeking to interrupt conventional or ordinary life while also re-routing the expectations of queer viewers themselves.

In this way, artworks do queer work, just like museum and gallery workers and museum and gallery audiences. The articles in this issue seek to spotlight this queer work in the Midlands, which responds to the region’s histories, its diverse publics, and the precise contexts and challenges of the present moment.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank all the contributors to this issue. Thank you also to Julie Brown, Leonie O’Dwyer, Victoria Osborne, Martin Roberts, and Heather Southorn for their help in facilitating this work. Thank you also, finally, to Rebecca Savage, for additional editorial assistance.

Gregory Salter is Associate Professor in History of Art at the University of Birmingham.

Notes

[1] For an overview of the work done on Prejudice & Pride, see Anon., ‘Prejudice & Pride: exploring LGBTQ lives at the National Trust’, Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG), University of Leicester, accessed 28 March 2025; for an overview of the Queer British Art 1861-1967, see Anon., ‘Queer British Art 1861-1967’, Tate, accessed 28 March 2025.

[2] Anon., ‘The Queer Heritage And Collections Network’, accessed 28 March 2025.

[3] Sophie Hatchwell and Gregory Salter, ‘Introduction: Co-production in regional collections’, Midlands Art Papers 7 (2024), accessed 28 March 2025.

[4] Charlotte Keenen McDonald, Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender & Identity, exhibition catalogue, Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool, 2017).

[5] Alex Horn, Oliver Winchester, and Matt Smith, Queering the Museum, exhibition catalogue, Birmingham Museum And Art Gallery (Birmingham, 2011).

[6] Julie Brown, ‘Here&Queer’, The New Art Gallery Walsall, accessed 28 March 2025.

[7] Michael Petry, Hidden Histories: 20th Century Male Same Sex Lovers in the Visual Arts (London, 2004).

[8] For information on Yeadon’s exhibition, see John Yeadon, ‘Dirty Tricks’, accessed 28 March 2025 and my article in this issue.