LGBT Blogging at the Museum of London

So how did it go?  In a word - wonderfully.

The god Mithras at the Museum of London

We kicked off with some introductions and were delighted with the variety amongst the large group that decided to spend their Saturday afternoon with us. We had a mixture of museum professionals, Proper Bloggers (eek - but no one rumbled me publically), historians, academics, social crusaders, followers of fashion (is that hat a tiger or is that tiger a hat? Either way I want one) and real bona fide first day in London tourists. Without exception everyone ticked more than one of the above boxes.

We were quite hyped.

After introductions, I talked about blogging in general (as below post). The fabulous Lucy Inglis then blew me out of the water with an off the cuff, on the money talk about the realities of history blogging with some pertinent examples from her own experience and a brief glimpse into Georgian London's Molly Houses.

This segued neatly into the Museum tour of LGBT objects. Kate led us through the galleries in pursuit of all things queer and beautiful. We took in gayish gods (Mithras), scapegoating mediavalists, cross dressing ladies of the night and the London Gay Men's Choir, stories of acceptance, denial misunderstanding and outright bigotry.  We saw through history the differences in perception of gender and sexual practices and how society's norms and attitudes changed depending on class, political background and the personalities of the individuals concerned.

Chevalier d'Eon - dressed like a lady, fenced like a man*

We were quite a large group and it was quite busy, so it is possible some of the other Museum goers may have been treated to some unexpected vocabulary (infrequent mentions of homosexual, sodomy, sex,... hello saturday aftenoon museum goer... ).  Some people scuttled out of our way as we bore down on them in a big Monty Python style group, but there was no other reaction.  To be frank, it hadn't even crossed my mind we'd get one until one of our group members pointed it out to me.  He was right, it was a naieve assumption to make given that you never know who you might meet.  Perhaps Mithras was smiling down upon us or perhaps, even better, people who would have taken offence are either extinct or realise they are in such a small minority there's no point.

Tour highlights included a wonderful moment when some of our group were delighted to hear for the first time of the relationship between the Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous.  Eye opening moments like that are hard to beat.

Elsewhere we had spontaneous double hosting when Lucy joined Kate to supply more fascinating detail in the tale of the dubious Samuel Drybutter and relate the story of the marvelous cross dressing Princess Serafina.  (Details of all of this and more on the UL page describing the tour).

This seems perfectly reasonable to me

Kate highlighted an interesting point when we reached the suffragettes.  In these displays there are no references to same sex relationships although diary entries from prominent members of the movement tell of a proliferation of sex politics at its core.  Instead the outrageous propoganda from the time, which villifies the suffragettes as sexless monsters and abandoners of the home is displayed alongside images of respectable marches and hand sewn banners, presumably to contrast the nonsense and the reality.  These new galleries were opened relatively recently and the relationships among the key movers of the suffragettes have been widely published as long ago as 2000.  Researching lesbians in the archives has moved on quite significantly since the days when unmarried/ unhappily married women were invisible.  It's hard to imagine what the reason was to leave out this part of the story.

Antinous out and proud at the British Museum

A recent (possibly WQL, yes) lecture by Richard Parkinson about the Queer objects at the British Museum highlighted that these things don't need to be shouted, just not glossed over.  His example was the exhibition label on the massive statue of Antinous that stood in the Great Court in 2008, seen by a good fraction of  that year's reported 1.3 million visitors which simply read "Antinous was the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian."  No fanfare or hedging or debate, just a description in plain terms of their relationship.  More of this please.

When we got back to the Clore centre and had liberated the James Bond style pop up computers from their desks, everyone got down to blogging their thoughts about the tour.  After twenty minutes or so had elapsed it was sharing time and the results were outstanding.  Subjects ranged from eloquent descriptions of the day, to short essays on modern dilemnas with historical parallels, to inspirations for future work, to the very nomenclature and understanding of gender through the ages and the difficulties of dealing with it in interpretation.  All pretty impressive.  Some of these blogs can be found at the bottom of the UL article.

All in all it was a great afternoon, made so by the ever knowledgable Lucy and Kate and all the fabulous people who came to blog.  We should do this again some time.

*The Chevalier is not covered in the Museum tour - I just happened to find her whilst looking for pictures of Serafina/ A Monty Python Gilliam crowd scene and loved the image.  Link to the source on the Duchess of Devonshire's blog under image...