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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>How did you begin in this field?<\/h3>\n
I\u2019m an art and design historian by training. About a decade ago, I started to realise that the artists I was researching \u2013 the 20th-century British Neo-Romantics \u2013 were mostly gay men. The only way to understand their artistic circle was to understand the gay subculture they were part of. I got involved in my museum\u2019s LGBTQ Working Group to pursue this idea, and it took off from there. I\u2019m endlessly fascinated by seeing how LGBT+ people have lived in every human society and how they managed to thrive, despite often being denied and erased. It\u2019s personal too: it\u2019s the story of my own community, and I want to use my role as curator to share that history. I\u2019m lucky to work for Historic Royal Palaces, an accredited Independent Research Organisation. We\u2019re committed to telling truly representative and inclusive stories, so there\u2019s huge support.<\/p>\n
- Read more | From Sappho to It\u2019s a Sin: 9 LGBT+ histories, chosen by experts<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
What reactions have you had to your field of history?<\/h3>\n
Every curator needs a specialism, but I\u2019ve never wanted to focus on just one historic period or type of object when so much out there is interesting. LGBT+ history allows me to look at different time periods, people and places. People now come to me as an expert in the field, and it\u2019s very flattering to be asked for advice or to speak at conferences. A lot of my work is public facing, and the response has been great there, too. This is a history people want to know about, and we get great feedback from our LGBT+ events. While you can\u2019t please everyone, especially on social media, overall the reactions are very positive.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the most interesting piece of research you have uncovered?<\/h3>\n
My favourite story is of the court musician Arabella Hunt. In 1680, Arabella married a James Howard, who was in fact a woman called Amy Poulter. Amy had courted Arabella in male and female clothes, and when the case was brought to court, she claimed it was a joke that had got out of hand. To me, marriage seems to be taking a joke very far indeed, so I\u2019m not convinced by Amy\u2019s defence. The story raises so many questions of how and what Amy and Arabella felt or knew about each other. It\u2019s a story that\u2019s been published before, but we\u2019ve never told it as part of the royal histories of the palaces that HRP cares for until now.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Mrs Arabella Hunt singing to Queen Mary. (Photo by Culture Club\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n In your opinion, what has been the biggest event in LGBT+ history?<\/h3>\n
The 2017 celebration for the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act<\/a> was huge. The 1967 act partially decriminalised homosexual acts between men \u2013 itself a watershed moment for LGBT+ history. The celebrations were marked by museums and heritage sites across the country, including Historic Royal Palaces. I\u2019d been advocating LGBT+ histories for years, but suddenly everybody realised it was important to put these stories front and centre as part of a major national anniversary. There were so many special events, exhibitions, publications and conferences \u2013 I couldn\u2019t keep up! Its legacy is that the sector understands that it\u2019s important to tell these stories, and curators have searched for them in their histories and collections. The challenge now is to keep up the momentum and work out how we can build on our successes.<\/p>\n
- Read more | What are the challenges of telling LGBTQ history?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
How important is it that LGBT+ stories from history are told?<\/h3>\n
People need to know their heritage to have a sense of belonging. So many LGBT+ people face exclusion and rejection every day, and it\u2019s important to show them that they belong. There\u2019s a great film from 1996 called The Watermelon Woman<\/em> by Cheryl Dunye \u2013 it looks like a documentary, but it\u2019s actually a fictional account about Dunye discovering the life of a black lesbian actress from the 1930s. It was the first feature film made by a black lesbian, and it\u2019s helped me understand how important it is for people to be able to find others who looked and felt like them in the past. If we ignore the lives of LGBT+ people in history, we\u2019re only ever going to get part of the picture. To properly understand the past, we have to understand the lives of everybody who has come before us, not just those people who looked and acted in a certain way. There\u2019s now an understanding that we need to know more about the people in history whose voices have been silenced, and this can transform the lives of people living today.<\/p>\n
Matthew Storey is Collections Curator at Historic Royal Palaces<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
- Read more | What are the challenges of telling LGBTQ history?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
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