In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Review of Exhibitions
  • Dominic Janes (bio)
British Library, Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty(2017)
British Museum, Desire, Love, Identity: Exploring LGBTQ Histories(2017)
Tate Britain, Queer British Art, 1861–1967(2017)

British attitudes towards same-sex love and desire have changed enormously over the last fifty years. The UK once had some of the most comprehensive sets of anti-gay laws in Europe and a concomitant history of public hostility, which also affected lesbians even though their sexual lives had never been criminalized. The country has now moved to being one of those in the world with the most positive attitudes towards the LGBTQ community. It is that newly established, if not entirely secure, mood not just of toleration but of celebration that enabled the fiftieth anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act (1967) to be marked by events at a series of major cultural institutions. The Act provided for the decriminalization of consensual sexual acts in England and Wales between two men that took place in private and where both parties were twenty-one years of age or over. It was significant because of the severe nature of the previous legal penalties for sexual acts between men (sex between women has never been a criminal offence in English law). The Buggery Act (1533) made sodomy a capital offence. This provision remained on the statute book until 1828 but hangings continued under the Offences of the Person Act (1828) until the reforms of 1861. Thereafter, those found guilty were liable to imprisonment. However, a much wider range of sexual acts than anal intercourse were then criminalized under the definition of "gross indecency" as introduced by the Criminal Law [End Page 103]Amendment Act (1885). The partial repeal of this latter legislation in 1967 did not apply to Scotland, nor Northern Ireland, where similar reform had to wait another fifteen years. It should be seen in the context of the liberalizing tendencies of the 1960s and the moderate reform agenda supported by certain religious and homophile groups. It predated the movement for lesbian and gay liberation and was a measure intended to provide for private discretion rather than open celebration. Neoconservative politicians supported attempts to reverse the trend towards liberalization in the context of the AIDS crisis. But with the advent of potent anti-retroviral therapies the mood of public panic abated and in 2013 same-sex marriage became legal (albeit not its celebration by Anglicans who comprise the state church).

A series of major institutions that together form a substantial element of what might be termed the British cultural establishment staged exhibitions to mark the anniversary. The British Library called its exhibition Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty; the British Museum presented Desire, Love, Identity: Exploring LGBTQ Histories; and Tate Britain (the foremost collection of British art) offered Queer British Art, 1861–1967. In terms of scale they ranged from a single small room at the British Museum, to a moderately sized range of displays off the main atrium at the British Library, to a full-scale hang across a series of rooms at Tate Britain. The latter institution, it should be added, was also hosting a retrospective of the gay artist David Hockney while its sister institution across town, Tate Modern, was presenting an exhibition of the work of the queer photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. The Tate Galleries clearly put considerable effort into queering 2017 and were rewarded by a good deal of publicity while the efforts of the British Library and the British Museum went largely unremarked. This is not to say that the press reviews of Queer British Artwere always insightful. Some of them merely described images from the exhibition that caught their attention and indicated whether the show was worth a visit. Print journalism remains a powerful source of debate in Britain and one that continues to play a major role in influencing the direction of public policy (as was the case with the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union). Therefore, I will quote from a number of the reviews that made revealing comments about contemporary cultural politics. It seems that many visitors struggled to make connections between their expectations of LGBTQ cultures and...

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