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Description: Sixty photographs focusing on both historical and contemporary iconic figures in the gay community, selected by the likes of Waheed Alli, Chris Smith, Ian McKellen and Sandi Toksvig.
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square; Rail: Charing Cross 
, Tube / Bus: 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 23, 24, 29, 53, 77A, 88 
Phone: 0207312 2463
Website: www.npg.org.uk
Extra info: Pub, Telephones, Air Conditioning, Food, Party Hire
Fifty years of gay pride: Quentin Crisp, his eyes tough and utterly defiant on an icy day in New York
Fifty years of gay pride: playwright Joe Orton
The National Portrait Gallery - the stern heart of the art world, filled with pictures of dead monarchs - has decided to go gay.
For the first time in its history, it has dedicated an exhibition not to Queens, but to queens.
It's a final official seal of approval - yet it has been handled nervously, and weirdly bodged.
An exhibition dedicated to the evolution of gay icons should be fascinating. An icon is a mirror: it tells you how a group sees itself, distilled into a single personality.
Fifty years ago, the gay world was Judy Garland writ large: the tragic Dorothy dreaming of a better world somewhere over the rainbow but reaching for the bottle or the needle until it came.
Gradually, as homophobia was beaten back, gay icons became perkier and happier, until they ended with Kylie, an upbeat nymph singing about boys.
The journey from Judy to Kylie has been long and sinuous, and it deserves an exhibition.
But the National Portrait Gallery seems to have panicked over the subject matter and out-sourced its judgment to a cabal of celebrities - some admirable, some brain-dead.
Instead of properly curating it, they commissioned 10 gay celebrities to each choose six people who inspired them personally, and cobbled an exhibition from the answers.
The celebs were told they didn't have to choose gay people, or those who have inspired gay people. Be "personal".
So the exhibition is clogged with a bizarre hodge-podge of people who have nothing to do with the gay world at all.
Elton John has chosen Graham Taylor, the football manager, because he helped Elton's team, Watford FC, to do well.
Billie Jean King has chosen her mum and dad and brother, and her friend, Christiane Amanpour from CNN.
You can see what they're trying to say: gay people aren't defined by our sexuality alone; we contain multitudes. We can love football or our mums or random people off the telly.
But gay icons - the supposed subject of the exhibition - are not "purely personal", as the exhibition claims.
They are people who gay people, as a group, have exalted, because they see something of their collective identity in them. It's a crucial conceptual difference.
True, some of the great-and-good guest curators have defied the foolish advice of the gallery and made choices that do illuminate the experience of gay people over the past 50 years.
The novelists Sarah Waters and Alan Hollinghurst have carefully chosen some remarkable neglected gay writers; heroic political activists like Peter Tatchell and Angela Mason manage to nudge their way in.
But mostly, we are left with the generic inspirational figures of the 20th century, described in idiotic Hallmark-card clichés.
Yes, here is Nelson Mandela, with a caption reading: "One man. One heart. One mind." This is the margarine of the gay world - a blanded-out hollowness where there should be a beating heart.
Only a few interesting portraits have sneaked in through the misunderstandings.
There's a photograph of Daphne Du Maurier, the novelist so torn about her sexuality that she thought she had a split personality.
She looks like the second Mrs De Winter, grown old and cold, trapped as her own repressed creation.
Then there's Quentin Crisp on an icy day in New York City, his clothing effeminate and fey, his eyes tough and utterly defiant.
There's more of the story of struggle of his generation of gay men buried in his stare than in the rest of this gallery combined.
Why were the other deserving - or revealing - gay icons elbowed aside for so many narcissistic choices? How did an exhibition billed as Gay Icons end up as a Facebook gallery of strangers?
Gay Icons is at the National Portrait Gallery (020 7306 0055, www.npg.org.uk) until 18 September. Daily 10am-6pm, Thurs and Fri until 9pm. £5, concs available.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
When doing a gay exhibition you should use collective gay icons, instead off peoples icons we all have icons but we look upto our icons for a reason black people will have black icons, muslim people have muslim icons and gay people have gay icons and thats the way the exhibition should be handled. I think that the national portrait gallery are being too safe in what they have done and to be honest i dont see the point in the exhibition. Exhibitions are meant to be controversial that is the point of art!!!! How can gay people be expected to be proud when art galleries and other institutions are afraid to show gay icons in their limelight.
- Kay, London
