A Little Gay History

[anteros_lmc]

The British Museum has launched a new museum discovery trail called "A Little Gay History: Desire and diversity across the world". The project highlights artefacts from the museum's collection that "provide evidence that desire between members of the same sex has always been an aspect of human existence and experience."

Blurb as follows:

The evidence for same-sex desire and fluid ideas of gender has often been overlooked in the past, but museums and their collections can allow us to look back and see diversity throughout history.

Much of the historical evidence is centred around men and their concerns and often what survives is partial, fragmentary or ambiguous. Such things have often been hidden in history, and obscured by censorship, but now we realise the past is much ‘queerer’ than we have often thought.

Hadrian and Antinous
Not all the artefacts are on permanent display, due to their fragility, but you can see many of them online here. There's also a rather wonderful commentary by museum curator Richard B Parkinson and guests, including the actor Simon Russel Beale, which you can listen to here.

Comments

[esteven]

:) Thank you for these links.
*goes to peruse the artefacts online*

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I can highly recommend listening to the audio commentary if you haven't done to already :)

[esteven]

*keeps link for further listening*

Hope holidays are everything you wish for.

[aletheiafelinea.livejournal.com]

I like that it includes also the Maori artifact, very interesting (and how pretty!). I'd love to see more items not only from our traditional Mediterranean-focused area. Thank you for sharing! :)

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed. They seem to have made a real effort to select artefacts from a wide range of time periods and traditions

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks for the links. charliecochrane mentioned that one t'other day.

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome. There was a free lecture about the trail at the museum on Friday, but alas I didn't get round to posting about it in time.

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

I recently read "Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition", in which the author postulates that gay history had not been the subject of research until the 1980s or so. I don't know enough about gender history studies to know whether he is right, but I thought it's quite interesting. Gay history is such an obvious, fascinating subject, it seems incredible it should be such a recent one.

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

I recently read "Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition"
Ooh I've seen that book, is it good?

I'm no authority on gender studies either but the author of Boys at Sea said something very similar. I vaguely recall he said that it was the late seventies before any real research started.