LGBTQ+ History Resources: Arts

This article gives a list of Australian films about LGBTQ+ people and issues from 1910 to the present day. These films are available to watch on YouTube, and links are provided in the article.

"Gran Fury was an artists' collective devoted to AIDS activism through agitprop art ... The collection contains examples of Gran Fury's works in the form of posters, stickers, fliers, printed ads, billboards and bus signs, as well as photograph and slide reproductions."

A digital exhibition of the portraits of Lenore Chinn, which focus mostly on queer relationships. Descriptions accompanying the portraits provide information about their subjects and their relationships with the artist.

This digital exhibition explores "the ways in which various selections of 19th century literature from USF Libraries-Tampa Special Collections can be used to trace changing perceptions of homoerotic desire across the century."

A catalogue entry about ''Hermaphrodite', a 1639 bronze sculpture by Giovanni Francesco Susini (1585–1653).

This is the British Museum's collection of artefacts depicting and related to the Greco-Roman god Hermaphroditos, child of Aphrodite and Hermes, who was thought to be simultaneously male and female.

A collection of articles, videos, and podcasts about art in LGBTQ+ history.

This series of three short films produced by the National Galleries of Scotland explores LGBTQ+ artists and their artworks throughout history.

This is a guide to the exhibition 'Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer', held at the Schwules Museum in Berlin. It was "the first international exhibit exploring the multiple historical, cultural, and political intersections of queerness and disability."

In this article, published by The National Gallery, the author "explores Saint Sebastian's resonance within the queer community and recreates Cima's 'Saint Sebastian' in drag."

"Selected by our LGBTQ Working Group and LGBTQ Volunteer Tour Guides, the objects in this trail reveal stories of diverse gender and sexual identities across time, place and culture."

This PhD thesis "explores theatrical crossdressing, specifically masculinity embodied by a female actor, in British and American performances starting in 1689 and ending in 1914. By examining specific performances, plays and historical individuals over the course of 225 years, this dissertation traces theorizations of gender during these different time periods, combining a close reading of texts with historical research and historiography to offer transgender readings of characters, performers and historical individuals."

This PhD thesis details the life of Kaikhosru Sorabji (1892–1988), a half Parsee musician and composer, through oral history. The author interviewed people from the village in which Sorabji lived his secluded life and the section on Sorabji's companion, Reginald Best, points to his homosexuality and details the reactions and attitudes of villagers to their relationship.

"This dissertation considers the intersections between emerging capitalism, global trade, and shifting negotiations of value as they are represented in early modern English theatre during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

"This book analyses queer cultural production in contemporary China to map the broad social transformations in gender, sexuality and desire. It examines queer literature and visual cultures in China’s post-Mao and postsocialist era to show how these diverse cultural forms and practices not only function as context-specific and culturally sensitive forms of social activism but also produce distinct types of gender and sexual subjectivities unique to China’s postsocialist conditions." This book is available through SOLO.

This PhD thesis provides a queer reading of "galanterie" in seventeenth century French prose fiction. Texts analysed include Madame de Villedieu’s Mémoires de la vie de Henriette Sylvie de Molière (1672), Catherine Bernard’s Fédéric de Sicile (1680), l'Abbé de Choisy's Histoire de la Marquise-Marquis de Banneville (1695), and Donneau de Visé’s “queer tales” in multiple issues of Mercure galant.