Homosexualität_en

A total of 1,600 square meters of exhi­bi­tion space doc­u­ments 150 years of the his­to­ry of homo­sex­u­al men and women in Ger­many. The exhi­bi­tion explores how homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by soci­ety, church, and state, crim­i­nal­ized by law, and pathol­o­gized by med­i­cine. It traces the legal devel­op­ment of Sec­tion 175 of the Ger­man Crim­i­nal Code, which crim­i­nal­ized homo­sex­u­al acts, from its enact­ment in 1872, through its mas­sive tight­en­ing dur­ing the Nazi era, and its reten­tion until its final abo­li­tion in 1994. In addi­tion to social repres­sion, the exhi­bi­tion also address­es the eman­ci­pa­tion move­ments of gay men and les­bian women, which gained momen­tum, par­tic­u­lar­ly since legal lib­er­al­iza­tion in 1969. Final­ly, it also ques­tions the present and future of the gen­der order, which tra­di­tion­al­ly is based sole­ly on the cat­e­gories of man and woman, as well as the broad­er spec­trum of sexualities.

In addi­tion to inter­na­tion­al loans, the com­pre­hen­sive exhi­bi­tion presents numer­ous exhibits from the col­lec­tion of the Schwules Muse­um*, archives of the wom­en’s and les­bian move­ment, and numer­ous pri­vate col­lec­tions. Select­ed works by artists includ­ing Mon­i­ca Bon­vici­ni, Louise Bour­geois, Claude Cahun, Heather Cas­sils, Michael Elm­green & Ingar Dragset, Lotte Laser­stein, Lee Lozano, Sturte­vant, Jeanne Mam­men, and Andy Warhol com­ment on the exhi­bi­tion’s themes in diverse ways.

The sec­ond stop of the Berlin exhi­bi­tion ​“Homosexualität_​en” opened on May 12, 2016, at the LWL Muse­um of Art and Cul­ture in Mün­ster. What’s spe­cial about this exhi­bi­tion is the merg­ing of the orig­i­nal exhi­bi­tion con­cepts of the Schwules Muse­um* and the Ger­man His­tor­i­cal Muse­um on this top­ic, mak­ing Mün­ster a very com­pact and thus unique exhibition.