Popular LGBTQ+ tours return to museums
After quickly selling out the first time, the University of Cambridge Museums are bringing back their popular LGBTQ+ tours.
'Bridging Binaries' are free tours offered at four Cambridge museums and booking is now open for the events.
From same-sex behaviour among penguins to eroticism in the ancient world, the volunteer tour guides will explore the spectrum of identities that exist across time, place and culture in Cambridge collections.
The volunteer guides will tell a personal selection of fascinating stories of non-normative gender and sexual identities through a range of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer-related objects. The museums taking part are The Fitzwilliam Museum, The Polar Museum, the Museum of Classical Archaeology and the Museum of Zoology.
Some of the highlights at the Museum of Classical Archaeology include the love story of Hadrian and Antinous, the asexuality of the goddess Artemis and the tale of why there is no statue of a hermaphrodite in the collection.
All of the Museums and tours are wheelchair accessible. Volunteer guides are happy to adjust the tours to meet the needs of the group on the day.
Nicola Hughes, opening doors project co-ordinator, University of Cambridge Museums, says: "After the success of the pilot run of the Bridging Binaries project, University of Cambridge Museums is delighted that the second phase of this project is now running at four museums across Cambridge. UCM were keen to understand if these LGBTQ+ tours could become an embedded feature in the public offer of the museums; we tested the water with the first phase of this project to see if volunteers were keen to get involved and whether the public would be interested in attending. We were delighted on both accounts and can now see that there is an appetite for these activities. Our inspirational volunteers enabled us to run tours for 500 people between January and February and have added their own unique twist on each of the tours run.”
To book a place on one of the free tours, visit museums.cam.ac.uk/events/lgbtq-tours
