The Queer Britain Museum Opens in London

Queer Britain, the UK’s first LGBTQ+ museum, has officially opened its doors to the public in London. The new museum is arguably one of the most important museums to have launched in the UK in recent years. Co-founded in 2018 by Joseph Galliano, Queer Britain now has numerous team members and volunteers who have been working behind the scenes to bring the museum to life. 

Queer Britain will become an essential place for everyone, regardless of sexuality or gender identity, to discover the rich and diverse history and culture of LGBTQ+ people throughout the UK and beyond.

The exhibition, Welcome to Queer Britain, will kickstart the new museum’s programming with various pieces of its growing collection and previous exhibitions, including artwork from the Queer Britain archive, housed at the Bishopsgate Institute. The exhibit will also include a previous collaborative exhibition between Queer Britain, Getty Images, and M&C Saatchi as well as images from the 2019 Chosen Family exhibition – a collaboration with Levi’s and Queer Britain. 

Welcome to Queer Britain will run for eight weeks while the team prepares for a debut exhibition set to open this summer, but no details have been announced yet.  

Art, design, and LGBTQ+ curator for the Historic Royal Palaces, Matthew Storey has taken this opportunity to combine these pieces from previous exhibitions with portraits by Allie Crewe, Robert Taylor, and Sadie Lee to highlight the amazing work that the museum has done in the four years since its inception.

“It has been amazing to follow the journey of Queer Britain from a first idea to the opening of the UK’s first museum dedicated to LGBTQ+ people,” said Storey. “It has been an honor to curate the opening display that showcases Queer Britain’s achievements so far. I hope that the photographs chosen, reflect the rich diversity of the LGBTQ+ community past and present, as we look to the future of this important new museum.”

A truly inclusive space, Queer Britain proudly welcomes everyone – those who identify as part of the community and those who don’t – to come and see the space, experience a small portion of what the museum has been collecting over the past four years, and share their feedback.

“This represents a hugely important step, as the UK opens the doors of its own national LGBTQ+ museum; the start of something beautiful,” said Joseph Galliano, director and co-founder of Queer Britain. “We welcome all feedback from our visitors and see this opening before our debut exhibition as a real opportunity to connect with the public and what they want from the Queer Britain space so that over time, we can truly shift and evolve.”

Two award-winning artworks, created by Sadie Lee and Paul Harfleet, will also be on display in the museum. The artists and their work received the Queer Britain Madame Prize, an art award based on a Queer Creativity theme. Madame F wines sponsored the award with a minimum donation of £30,000 ($36,500 USD) a year and created a bespoke Queer Britain wine to sell in the museums’ gift shop.

Queer Britain is fully accessible via lifts and ramps and will always be free entry but welcomes donations to support its work. The space will also include a shop with Queer Britain merchandise as well as books curated by Gay’s The Word, with all profits going directly back to support the museum and charity. The new museum is located at 2 Granary Square, London, N1C 4BH, and it’s open Wednesday to Sunday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. 

For more information about Queer Britain, visit their website.