Queer British Art at the Tate
Didn't get the chance to see Tate's seminal, outstanding, incredible, landmark exhibition Queer British Art? Tour it virtually with us!
Cost: $10. Please note that this fee helps keep our small business going during the crisis so we can get up and running right away when it is safe to bring people together again in person.
Tickets: queerartatthetate.eventbrite.com
In 2017 Tate Britain in London did something extraordinary. It did something no other museum in the UK had done before—in fact, it did something that *no* other museum had done anywhere before. It staged a landmark exhibition, a summer blockbuster, that focussed squarely on the queer art of a nation: Queer British Art 1861–1967. Never before had the art of LGBTQ people been centre stage in such a visible way. The public went wild for it, and several newspapers gave it 5 stars, including The Guardian which called it "vital, fascinating... strange, sexy and heartwrenching." If you missed this exhibition (just where were you?!) don't worry because now is your chance to tour the exhibition virtually!
Queer British Art begins in 1861, when the death penalty for sodomy was abolished in the United Kingdom, and ends in 1967 when sex between men was partially decriminalised. The exhibition was divided over 8 rooms, which took the themes Coded Desires, Public Indecency, Theatrical Types, Bloomsbury and Beyond, Defying Conventions, Arcadia and Soho, Public/Private Lives, Francis Bacon and David Hockney. Within those rooms, and highlights you shall see on this virtual tour are:
Frederic Leighton’s sensuous male nudes
Beautiful youths in Wilhelm von Gloeden’s photographs
Gluck, Britain's first famous gender-queer artist and their defiant self-portrait, the poster image for the exhibition
Joe Orton's and Keith Halliwell's mischievously (and hilariously) altered library books
The art of Francis Bacon—possibly Britain's greatest painter of the 20th Century
Plus much more!
This is your only chance to visit or revisit one of the most important exhibitions on queer art there has ever been. Please join us!
More about our speaker:
George Benson worked at The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London before working at New York's Museum of Modern Art as an educator. At MoMA he co-created the museum's first ever public queer tour and at the British Museum he advised on their 2017 exhibition Desire, Love, Identity—10,000 years of same sex desire.
