LifeI Visited the World’s First Virtual
LGBTQ Museum
The LGBTQ+ VR Museum is one example of queer people carving out
their own space in an often hostile world.
MN by Matthew NealeJune 17, 2022, 9:55am

LGBQ+ VR MUSEUM CREATOR ANTONIA FORSTER IN A VR HEADSET AND PATRICIA CRONIN’S
SCULPTURE MEMORIAL TO A MARRIAGE IN . PHOTO: COURTESY OF FRASER AND PR

I’m standing in an undetermined liminal zone with a floating rainbow icon infront of me. Way beneath me is the Milky Way, a spectacular astral vista thatrenders our home galaxy an incidental detail in an ocean of stars. For once,
this is not the result of a heroic dose of acid at a Pride afterparty, but the lobbyof the world’s first virtual reality LGBTQ museum.
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Devised by Antonia Forster – activist, speaker, self-taught coder and once
declared one of the most influential queer people in Bristol – the LGBTQ+ VR
Museum offers a cultural exhibition based on contributions across the queer
community, from the southwest of England to Denmark and Ghana. Eachexhibit is made up of a 3D scan of a particular object and an accompanyingvoice message telling the story of its significance. It’s here that a set of nailpolish becomes an act of defiance, a karaoke microphone an avatar for proxycommunity and a carefully mislaid copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room abid to be discovered and seen.
Forster’s museum began life, like so many moments of cultural watershed,when she simply couldn’t find one anywhere else. “I kept thinking: ‘Surely
someone’s done this?’” she tells me from a café in Brislington, Bristol. But they
hadn’t. As it transpired, there was no dedicated LGBTQ+ museum in the UK
at the time (Queer Britain has since opened its doors as a physical museum,
where Forster’s project will be making an appearance in July). So she madeone.
As well as bringing together community, the project was intensely personal too.
After being asked to speak at a TEDxTalk event in 2017, Forster realised thetalk would constitute coming out to her family as bisexual and polyamorous.
Most of the conversations did not go well; some, she says, devolved into
blackmail, bribery and threats. “I was given that choice very explicitly: ‘We’ll
continue to support you, but only if you stay in the closet.’ And I didn’t want to
do that,” she says. “So my strategy was to become a software engineer.”
The move provided Forster with the knowledge and resources to access andcreate virtual worlds – and now, the freedom to give back to her community.
Thomas Terkildsen was one of a wave of contributors who responded to a callout on social media, and it quickly became apparent that his background in VR
development opened up possibilities for more in-depth collaboration on theproject.
“I knew it was a massive undertaking for one person – in hindsight it has beena huge project for two people trying to do it while also working full-time jobs,”
he says. “I remember going on school trips to museums where I saw paintingsof men and women being in love. I never saw any artworks telling stories ofmen loving men. I’m sure it would have helped me find myself if that sort ofrepresentation existed. And now it does.”2THE INTERIOR OF THE LGBQ+ VR MUSEUM. PHOTO: COURTESY OF PR

Stepping inside the museum, the experience of entering an alternate realitytranscends the technical beauty of its pristine surfaces and colourful exhibits.
It’s my first time using a Meta Quest 2 headset, and its immersive quality iscertainly sufficient to convince me I’m about to fall off the step to the garden
outside on more than one occasion. But what’s truly remarkable is the senseof occupying a queer space which isn’t a temporary loan, when LGBTQ+
events are so often stuffed into straight-leaning dive bars, standard art venues,
or otherwise makeshift DIY affairs. It’s a dedicated space, and one that you
realise the UK is severely lacking after the headset comes off.
Some people have waited longer than others for these moments. New Yorkbased artist Patricia Cronin contributed a virtual rendition of the marble statue
she created in 2002; titled Memorial to a Marriage, it depicts Cronin and herpartner Deborah locked in an embrace to mark their love after death, at a time
when they couldn’t marry. It remains the world’s first and only marriage equality
monument. “The challenge of this work was to strike a balance between ahigh level of formal execution and pointed political protest,” she can be heard
explaining in the museum. “What I couldn’t have in life, I would have forever indeath.”
Speaking to Cronin 20 years on, now happily married to Deborah, she still seesa frustrating lack of visibility for lesbians and the wider LGBTQ+ community. As
ever, the problems are intersectional: For a Bristol-based project launched in
the same year the Colston statue-topplers were cleared, the question of whoowns public spaces and how they decide what gets displayed in them is more
relevant than ever.

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AN EXHIBIT IN THE LGBQ+ VR MUSEUM. PHOTO: COURTESY OF PR“I rarely see my reflection in white male heterosexual patriarchal culture.
When I do see it, lesbians are usually the butt of a joke in a movie trailer
or in pornography designed by and for straight men,” Cronin says. “So, inaddition to not to seeing women honoured in public monuments and same-sex
marriage being illegal in the US at the beginning of the 21st century, I decidedto imagine a world where misogyny and homophobia didn’t exist.”
Cronin says she’s still giving her friends the same advice she was in 2002:“If you want permanent public art, you’ve got to buy the land.” But she’s notholding her breath. “I refuse to wait for the outside world, local and federal
municipalities, nor the culture from the art world to Hollywood to validate
me. I’ll do it for myself, thank you. I have the radical imagination to reject myabsence and insist on my presence with dignity.”This could be where virtual reality steps in to carve out new spaces beyondthis stuffy, heteronormative dimension. While the fight for queer rights
continues IRL, more and more projects are springing up (including Minecraft’s
groundbreaking Uncensored Library) that provide an opportunity to imagine
what the future might look like elsewhere. Then again, as the metaverse
expands, “elsewhere” may become an increasingly nebulous concept.
The reaction so far has been everything you’d expect from the internet. “Thetwo pieces of criticism I tend to get when I do queer activism are either ‘wedon’t need this because queer people are treated equally’ or ‘go die of AIDS’,”
Forster says. “And I’m like, well, one kind of disproves the other, right?” Thetech industry itself isn’t totally inclusive, either. “It’s its own echo chamberbecause it’s a skewed demographic. I don’t know the statistics about queer
people, but there’s fewer women in tech, as an example, and so it can beharder for women just by virtue of the fact that there are fewer of them.”
4Nonetheless, the museum is turning out to be something of an international
success. This month the project won the New Voices Award at Tribeca Festivalin New York, where the experience has been augmented by a biometricelement – the user wears a device with electrodes that can measure heart rateand skin conductivity, which translates into emotional arousal and engagementwith the content. In October, Forster and her team will be working with theDanish consulate in New York to stage a New York version of the museum, set
to exhibit at the High Line.

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For Forster, an avowed fan of Dungeons & Dragons and LARPing, other worlds
aren’t just out there to be discovered – they can be built. And they don’t needto operate by the same rules. “I think we’re very locked into ideas of what theworld can be, and they’re very narrow and limited, based on the limited view ofour society now, in this era, in the western world,” she says. “The idea of VR tome was actual sorcery – and it still is. I can create anything I can imagine withnothing. It’s pure magic, pure conjuration.”
LGBTQ+ VR Museum is currently exhibiting at Tribeca Festival 2022 until the19th of July.
@matthewgneale
TAGGED: TECH, VR, VIRTUAL REALITY, PRIDE, QUEER, PRIDE MONTH, MUSEUM

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