LGBTQ tour of London's National Portrait Gallery
Explore the UK's rich LGBTQ history through the NPG's collections with Professor Andrew Lear on the fun and interesting 75 minute Zoom tour!
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: npglgbttour.eventcombo.com
London’s National Portrait Gallery is truly one of the world’s gayest museums. Years ago (just to give you an idea), the permanent collection started with a statue of King Edward II (a medieval monarch murdered by his barons over his generosity to his “favorites”) and ended with Sir Ian McKellen. At that time, I called this talk, “England, from gay to shining gay.” The order of the collection has changed—and will change more as the museum is closed for a massive renovation—but the point remains: a walk through this museum’s collection is a great way to explore the UK’s rich and complex LGBTQ history.
On this fun and interesting Zoom talk, we will examine:
The most authoritative portrait of Shakespeare
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham—James I’s final “favorite”
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, the great poet/rake (played by Johnny Depp)
Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, Queen Anne’s favorite (played by Rachel Weisz)
The Chevalier d’Eon, 18th century French diplomat and trans celeb
George Lord Byron, bisexual sex addict
Richard Francis Burton, translator of the Arabian Nights and early sexuality theorist
Aubrey Beardsley, illustrator of Oscar Wilde’s Salome and….asexual?
Radclyffe Hall, lesbian and gender-queer author of The Well of Loneliness
Violet Trefusis, the Russian princess Sasha in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Lytton Strachey, eminent biographer and Bloomsburyite
Gluck, gender-queer designer and artist of the 1930s
Benjamin Britten and his partner and muse Peter Pears
And much more!
This tour will last 75 minutes (with Q&A), but by the end, you will never think of the British as dull and sexless (or straight!) again!
More about our speaker:
Professor Andrew Lear combines a love of travel with a passion for gay history, and he brings both of those attributes to Oscar Wilde Tours.
Professor Lear holds a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from UCLA. He has published a widely praised book on male-male love in ancient Greek art, as well as a number of important scholarly articles in this area. Indeed he is generally considered one of the foremost experts on same-sex love in the ancient world, but his interest in gay history extends to other key periods, such as fin-de-siècle England, Renaissance Italy, and medieval Japan—places and periods that we will explore at Oscar Wilde Tours.
A beloved teacher at Harvard, Columbia and NYU, Professor Lear won the Harvard Certificate for Excellence in Teaching four times. He has taught a wide variety of courses in Classics, history, art history, and gender studies—as well as Italian and French language classes.
His courses on sexuality in the ancient world have been particularly popular. Many years after graduating, students still take the time to let him know how much they appreciated his personal warmth, his passion for teaching, and the sense of fun that he brings to his classes.
Professor Lear brings all those qualities to Oscar Wilde Tours, along with twenty years of experience organizing and leading group tours. With his vast cultural background, his detailed knowledge of gay history and his long experience of travel, Professor Lear strives to provide our guests with a vacation that is intellectually stimulating, culturally rewarding and, above all, fun!
Read Professor Andrew Lear’s official Wikipedia biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lear