An exhibition exploring gay love and sexuality based on objects in the collection of the British Museum in London is due to open next spring. The show, provisionally titled A Little Gay History (May-October 2017), coincides with the anniversary of the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in July 1967, which partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales.
The small-scale, chronological exhibition is based on the 2013 book A Little Gay History by Richard Parkinson, the former curator of ancient Egyptian culture at the British Museum. The publication explores LGBTQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer) experiences within historical and cultural contexts, centred on museum objects ranging from ancient Egyptian papyri to prints by David Hockney.
“The [forthcoming] display draws on material from ancient history to the present day, and from around the globe,” a museum spokeswoman says. A silver medallion with the bust of the emperor Hadrian, who reigned from AD117 to AD138, and a coin with the head of his lover Antinous, minted around AD130, are among the objects included.
“The focus of the display is important because it highlights, as Parkinson states in his book, that diversity is integral to human desire and the human condition. Love, desire and gender are relevant issues to us all,” she says. Meanwhile, Queer British Art at Tate Britain next year (5 April-1 October 2017) will include works by artists such as Dora Carrington and Francis Bacon.
Other British Museum shows scheduled for next year include Treasures of the Scythians (14 September 2017-14 January 2018), which focuses on the ancient civilisation that prospered from the ninth century BC in the region around the Black Sea, covering the Crimea today. Most of the objects loaned are drawn from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
Another museum display, The Currency of Communism (26 October-May 2018), will explore “how communist states radically re-structured their economies to reflect Marxist ideology”, according to a press statement. Curators will present coins and banknotes, used across various Communist regimes, focusing also on bartering and the black market.
