Ireland’s first-ever permanent LGBTQ museum exhibition has opened in Cork.
The exhibition, “We Were Always Here”, opened on Wednesday at the Cork Public Museum in Fitzgerald Park and is a collaboration with the Cork LGBT Archive and features both a physical collection and a digital archive.
According to curator Orla Egan, the exhibition builds on the museum’s continued commitment to ensuring a more inclusive version of Cork’s history and heritage is on display and follows on from similar permanent exhibitions on Travellers and the Jewish community in Cork.
“Too often the history of the LGBT community has been invisible, ignored or erased. Having Cork’s LGBTQ history on display in the Cork Public Museum will ensure that is it accessible and cannot be forgotten or ignored,” said Egan, who is also the founder of the Cork LGBT Archive.
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“It sends a powerful message of respect and inclusion for a community that too often has experienced prejudice, punishment and exclusion. This is even more important in today’s world when we are witnessing an increase in transphobia and homophobia.”
Egan explained that the exhibition traces LGBTQ history in Cork through the stories of the people and organisations that sought to support and defend the LGBTQ community, especially when it was illegal to be homosexual in Ireland until 1993.
Dan Breen, curator of the Cork Public Museum, noted that the museum has often had to re-evaluate its exhibitions and collections since it first opened 80 years ago, and the museum was proud to be the first in Ireland to host a permanent LGBTQ collection.
“The exhibition continues Cork’s tradition of firsts in Irish LGBT history. In 1981, the first National Gay Conference was held in the city while Cork also hosted the first Irish Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in 1991,” said Breen.
“And then less than six months later, in 1992, the city’s St Patrick’s Day parade featured the first LGBTQ float seen at a St Patrick’s Day festival anywhere in the world so now, with this permanent LGBT exhibition, Cork is leading the way again.”
The exhibition, which is funded by Cork City Council, the Heritage Council and the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, also marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of the first gay centre in Cork when the Irish Gay Rights Movement rented a premises on MacCurtain Street in the city.
Meanwhile, Cork this week also became the first city in the world outside of the United States to exhibit the original Rainbow flag – the global symbol of LGBTI+ pride, visibility, inclusion and equality.
The Gilbert Baker flag, as the original Rainbow flag is known, was designed by activist and artist Gilbert Baker in 1978 and created for that year’s San Francisco Gay Freedom Day and it is on loan to Cork for four months for display at the LGBT exhibition at the Cork Public Museum.
Lord Mayor of Cork Cllr Damian Boylan said that Cork’s motto “Statio Bene Fida Carinis” – translated as “A Safe Harbour for Ships” – speaks of people knowing that when they have arrived in Cork, they have reached a place of safety.
“As we accept the Gilbert Baker flag and become its custodians for the next four months, we should pause for a moment and reflect on those words – how our city provides a safe harbour not just for ships, but for people too,” he said.
