Event Information
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Thu03May2018
Queer Perspectives: Turning the tables
19:00-20:00National Portrait Gallery
St Martin's Place
London
WC2H 0HEIn June 1914 suffragette Margaret Gibb, using the pseudonym Anne Hunt, smuggled an axe into the National Portrait Gallery and attacked a portrait of Thomas Carlyle, a towering intellectual of the Victorian age who amongst other things wanted to bring back slavery.
Margaret Gibb claimed her choice of portrait was a mere co-incidence. But given that Carlyle believed in the destiny of great men (there were no great women in his book), Bird begs the question:
Was this supposedly random act one of feminist fate?
Bird will pick up where Margaret left off and explore the dangerous legacy of Thomas Carlyle including his part in the history of racism, his wilful act of writing women out of history and his desire to return to feudalism.
There’s a queer perspective to every story including this one. Bird will get her beak stuck into suffragette spinsters, the infamous domestic arrangements in the Carlyle household and touch on the impact Carlyle had on early 20th Century queers.
Direction and dramaturgy
Jan Willhem van dem Bosch
FREE event
Find out more and reserve a ticket on the NPG website