Nottingham’s Galleries of Justice will display the door to the cell which once held Oscar Wilde as part of a new exhibition.
The Journey to Justice display will be open in early February and explore how figures from LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) history have fought for equality.
Playwright Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading jail between 1895 and 1897 after being convicted of ‘gross indecency’ under anti-homosexuality laws, and his former cell door is now owned by the Galleries.
Senior Curator and Archivist, Bev Baker, said: “The display will illustrate the developments of LGBT history and will feature a timeline of events featuring landmark moments and cases where people were attacked or killed for their gender.
“There will also be audio recordings of Nottingham people sharing their LGBT experiences and a projection of seven hundred famous faces from the community.
“The exhibition will recognise how things have changed and improved for people, but also explains how there is more that can be done.
“One of the last events on the timeline is the shooting at the gay nightclub in Orlando.”
The cell door was acquired by the Galleries of Justice Museum in 2005 and will be loaned to Tate Britain in March and April for its own exhibition.
Rosie Cox, Community Relations officer at Nottingham City Council, who has worked on the project said: “There was a great response following a request we put out on social media asking for people to get involved.
“The audio recordings we have are extracts of people’s LGBT stories from the 1930s, 40s and 50s.”
The exhibition is timed to coincide with LGBT History Month, celebrated in February, and the focus of the community’s work in 2017 will include the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England and Wales.
Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright born in Dublin in 1854 and best known for his play, The Importance of Being Earnest.
Wilde was arrested for ‘gross indecency’ under section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 and was sentenced in 1895 to two years’s hard labour in prison.
