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NOT SO SUNKEN TREASURE

This zine was created by a collective of LGBTQIA+* community researchers as part of a Community Partnerships Team programme at the British Museum in 2024.

Together the group explored and interrogated parts of the British Museum collection via their own lived experiences and perspectives as Queer people.

This was both exciting and, at times, frustrating work, looking for identifiers or mentions of stories and histories connected to LGBTQIA+ people and contexts in the past.

Objects, artworks or ‘things’ are not always inherently Queer or LGBTQIA+, although there may be people, events, stories, or associations connected with them that help to tell a long and diverse LGBTQIA+ history. The very act of doing this research as LGBTQIA+ people will bring a specific understanding and consideration of the objects which helps reveal and surface these Queer or LGBTQIA+ narratives and perspectives.

One of the frustrations came from the challenge of using the British Museum’s online collection database – Collections Online. Collections Online is an un-curated catalogue of information connected to those objects already digitised at the Museum.

There are millions of records.

These records show us information written by curators and researchers throughout the Museums 271 years of activity, which reflects changes in sensibilities and terminology, some of which can be deeply offensive for people in the present. There may also, be no contextual information available at all – this also leads to disappointment. The group rose to this challenge and met it remarkably.

The LGBTQIA+ community research group was started about four years ago. It saw both a core group of people, and those who joined for shorter periods of time, work together in a collective of mutual respect and curiosity to explore parts of the BM collection through a ‘queer’ personal lens.

This zine would not have been possible without the conversations, contributions and research done by all members of this group, both past and present.

Creators to this zine include:

ALEX PILIDES

ANNA KIRTON

CHRIS BARLOW

CHRIS WESTON

JONATHAN TEBBLE

MARIANA FEIJÓ

NATHAN EAST

Zine launch at The British Museum 15th February 2025

 

* LGBTQIA+ is an umbrella term that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual. The plus sign (+) represents the other identities that aren’t included in the acronym.

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