After recently revealing its new home in Kings Cross, today, Thursday 31st March, Queer Britain, the UK’s first LGBTQ+ museum, officially announce its opening to the public from 5th May 2022.

Kickstarting the Queer Britain programming will be “Welcome to Queer Britain”, a temporary display acting as an introduction to the charity and its mission - a rich showcase on show for 8 weeks whilst the team prepares their debut exhibition to open this summer. “Welcome To Queer Britain” will display various pieces from the museums’ growing photographic collection and previous exhibitions including artwork from the Queer Britain archive (housed at the Bishopsgate Institute) alongside a previous collaborative exhibition between Queer Britain, Getty Images and M&C Saatchi as well as images from the 2019 “Chosen Family” exhibition - a collaboration with Levi's and Queer Britain.

Bringing this debut collection of exciting works together is Matthew Storey (Art, design and LGBTQ+ history curator for Historic Royal Palaces) who has taken this opportunity to combine these pieces from previous exhibitions with portraits by Allie Crewe, Robert Taylor and Sadie Lee to highlight the amazing work that the museum has done in the four years since it’s inception.

Curator of “Welcome To Queer Britain”, Matthew Storey, says “It has been amazing to follow the journey of Queer Britain from a first idea to the opening of the UK's first museum dedicated to LGBTQ+ people. It has been an honour to curate the opening display that showcases Queer Britain's achievements so far. I hope that the photographs chosen reflect the rich diversity of the LGBTQ+ community past and present, as we look to the future of this important new museum.”

A truly inclusive space, Queer Britain proudly welcomes everyone - those who identify as part of the community and those who don’t - to come and see the space, experience a small portion of what the museum has been collating over the past four years and to share their feedback ready for the debut exhibition this summer.

Speaking about the opening, director and co-founder Joseph Galliano says "We are so proud to welcome people into Queer Britain's space for the very first time. This represents a hugely important step, as the UK opens the doors of its own national LGBTQ+ museum; the start of something beautiful. We welcome all feedback from our visitors and see this opening before our debut exhibition as a real opportunity to connect with the public and what they want from the Queer Britain space so that over time we can truly shift and evolve."

Queer Britain also will be displaying the top two winning artworks, by Sadie Lee and Paul Harfleet, from the Queer Britain Madame Prize, an art award on the theme Queer Creativity. ​​Sponsored by Madame F wines (www.madamef.com), a brave and original range of quality, accessible, wines created in collaboration with the team at Queer Britain in order to support the opening of the museum. Madame F sponsored the award with a minimum donation of £30,000 a year and created a bespoke Queer Britain wine to sell in the museums’ gift shop.

Queer Britain is a fully accessible via lifts and ramps and will always be free entry but welcomes donations to support its work. The space will also include a shop which will include Queer Britain merchandise as well as books curated by Gay’s The Word, with all profits going directly back to support the museum and charity. Queer Britain is located at 2 Granary Square, London, N1C 4BH and open Wednesday to Sunday from 12pm - 6pm.

More details on the debut Queer Britain exhibition will be announced in due course.