ABSTRACT
TH E I M P E T U S F O R M Y exhibition Hidden Histories, a look at twentieth-century male same-sex lovers in the visual arts, 1 was a research fellowship at the University of Wolverhampton. I was asked to develop a project for the recently opened New Art Gallery in Walsall and proposed an exhibition called Mad About the Boy. Noel Coward crooned that he was simply mad about a young gentleman. It was a very open form of hiding one’s sexuality, a form necessary for same-sex lovers living in the UK at that time, as male homosexuality was illegal and a matter for the police and blackmailers. Coward had obvious reasons
to fear public knowledge of his sexuality, yet he was part of a metropolitan elite of individuals able to enjoy their sexual lives as long as they employed certain codes and discretion.
