“It’s like touching a religious object,” Joseph Galliano-Doig, director of the New London Museum, tells The New York Times as he reaches for the heavy oak door in the main hall of the first exhibition. This is the door to the cell where Oscar Wilde spent two years of his life (1895–1897), imprisoned for sodomy, a euphemism for homosexuality, which was strictly forbidden and severely punished by the penal code of the day.

Welcome to Queer Britain, located near King’s Cross Station in the British capital, the UK’s first LGBTI+ museum. It joins an international network of archives and institutions such as the Schwules Museum in Berlin and the corresponding American Museum due to open in New York in 2026. The choice of the door from Oscar Wilde’s cell is not accidental and is a stark reminder of danger and danger. the taboo that homosexuality represented a hundred years ago. But Galliano-Doig also saw him as representative of “a door that has been flung open and has led to all the joys that you can see here,” he said, pointing to exhibits that chronicle gay Britain’s slow path to equality over the past century.

In less than five years, Queer Britain has gone from a rather volatile concept to a physical home, led by Gagliano-Doig, former editor of the Gay Times magazine, along with a diverse group of board members and administrators. The museum’s first free-of-charge exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the first London Pride in 1972. Political memorabilia reflecting the struggle for LGBTI+ rights in the UK was displayed on the walls, along with notes from the first parliamentary meeting on AIDS and this year’s Trans+ banners. Pride parade, held 10 days before the opening of the exhibition.

According to him, Galliano-Doig wanted the museum to present various queer experiences and create a museum where visitors not only see, but also feel seen. “In those early months, it was not unusual for someone to come here and cry,” he said. “Much of LGBTI+ history is silence, shame and erasure. For us, it means we are here and our stories deserve to be told.”