Cathy's Art Diary

Small display at the British Library of newspapers, leaflets and ephemera from the LBGT+ Community in the 1970s and 1980s. As the commentary says it “reflects a time of consciousness raising, identity building and activism”. It is wonderful that this very temporary feeling material has been kept. It not only narrates the history of gay lives and rights in the period but also of how issue related   ideas were spread pre-internet. I liked the humour in it “Bi-Monthly” for the bi-sexual magazine. Every group seemed to have a paper or magazine. It was good to see the infamous “Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin” which partly sparked Clause 28 banning the promotion of homosexuality. Closes 30 October 2022    

Small exhibition at the British Museum looking at how we glimpse gay life in their collections and how it often went unacknowledged in the past. It talked about the museum’s secret museum which it had from 1830 – 1953 with objects, including those reflecting homosexual relationships, which were not on view to the public. Some of the objects were rather ironic such as an Etruscan canvas where a ‘rude’ bit was cut out and put in the secret museum. The main canvas has now been lost and only the ‘rude’ bit survives. It looked at how we have more images of male homosexuality in the collection via depictions of the Ganymede myth whereas lesbianism is rarer and often produced for men rather than women such as in images on oil lamps. There was also a good trail around the museum pointing out objects on permanent view and their relevance such as the busts of Hadrian and Antinous shown here. Closed on 15 October 2017  

Fabulous exhibition at Tate Britain looking at the connections between art and sexuality and gender identity from 1861, the abolition of the death penalty for sodomy, to 1967, the partial decimalisation of sex between men. There was so much fantastic work in this show I feel I could write pages on it but I’ll resist! My only criticism was that it was a bit unsure at times if it was about LBGT art or the history of LBGT life in this period. Don’t get me wrong either would be fascinating but to do the latter fully would have needed a much bigger exhibition. For example I loved seeing Noel Coward’s dressing gown but wasn’t quite sure how it fitted a show on art. Similarly one section got a bit focused on the changing role of women and how female artists broke barriers by starting to do life studies but again this seemed to belong to a different show, much as I am happy for any excuse to see the wonderful Laura Knight self-portrait, I felt this might be a subject for another great