York museums Trust (YMT), specifically York Art Gallery (YAG) and York LGBT Forum have formed a partnership, the Queering Group, with an aim to broaden the stories being told within YAG’s collections, enabling greater inclusion and social justice/equality for the LGBTQ+ community.

As a precursor to the Bloomsbury exhibition scheduled for 2022 at YAG, a group famous for their unconventional relationships with one another, this initiative with York’s LGBT Forum group will focus on the reinterpretation of some of our own works in the permanent collection.

We aim to work within the heritage organisation to uncover, understand and interpret the lives of people linked to the site as collectors/artists/craftspeople, who challenged conventions of sexuality and gender diversity. In answer to this we have formed the Queering Group. The use of Queer in the groups title is a positive affirmation. As a definition Queer has a number of meanings, and in this instance, our aim is to de-weaponize the term Queer, a reclaimed slur that we use positively as an inclusive word for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. ​

York LGBT Forum have created a handy guide to commonly used terminology, view it here.