Berlin: Homosexuality_ies

Press release by the Schwules Museum*

The Schwules Museum* and the Deutsches Historisches Museum present the exhibition “Homosexuality_ies” from 26 June to 1 December 2015 [at the Schwules Museum*, Lützowstraße 73, 10785 Berlin.]

This special exhibition on view at both museums offers an overview of the history, politics and culture of homosexual people. Jointly funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Cultural Foundation of the German Laender, it puts the political contribution the homosexual liberation movements made toward the development of our democratic society in the visual range of a broader public for the first time.

150 years and 1600 square meters of the history of homosexual women and men in Germany will be documented. The exhibition thematizes how homosexuality has been the object of discrimination by society, church and state, criminalization through legislation and pathologization in medicine. It shows the legislative development of Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which made “homosexual acts” punishable by law. Paragraph 175 took effect in 1872, underwent massive harshening in the Nazi era and was retained thereafter, being definitively voided in 1994. In addition to social repression, the exhibition also addresses the liberation movements of gay men and lesbian women, movements which took on a new dynamic after the legal liberalization of 1969. And finally, “Homosexuality_ies” raises questions as to the future of gender codes in a society that accepts a diverse spectrum of genders and sexualities.

Alongside items on international loan, this comprehensive show presents numerous materials from the collection of the Schwules Museum* and the archives of the women’s and lesbian movement, as well as from several private collections. Works by artists such as Monica Bonvicini, Louise Bourgeois, Heather Cassils, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Lotte Laserstein, Lee Lozano, Sturtevant, Jeanne Mammen and Andy Warhol comment on the exhibition’s themes in a variety of ways.

An exhibition of the Schwules Museum* and the Deutsches Historisches Museum jointly funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Cultural Foundation of the German Laender.