Matthew Storey, Curator of Collections.
Position: Curator of Collections
About
Matthew is the curator of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection and works on LGBTQ+ research and interpretation. His areas of expertise include royal and court dress from the 18th century to the present day, and LGBTQ+ inclusive museum practice. He has also worked on a range of areas of art and design history from the 16th century to the present day.
He curated Royal Style in the Making (2021) at Kensington Palace, featuring the wedding dress of Diana, Princess of Wales. Other projects include Permissible Beauty (2023) at Hampton Court Palace, which created portraits of creative talents from the Black British Queer community inspired by Sir Peter Lely’s ‘Windsor Beauties’ portraits.
He has published on Georgian portraiture and gardens, the wardrobe of Queen Victoria, and LGBTQ+ inclusive practice in museums and heritage sites. He serves on the steering group of the Queer Heritage and Collections Network.
Select publications
Storey, M., ‘Seeing an Eden from a Desert: Topographical Views of Kew and Richmond Gardens in the 1760s’, in Capability Brown, Royal Gardner: The Business of Place-Making in Northern Europe, ed. by J. Finch and J. Woudstra (York: White Rose Press, 2020), pp. 49-59.
Storey, M., and Worsley, L., ‘Queen Victoria: An Anatomy in Dress’, Costume, 53 (2019), 256–279.
Legon, E., Storey, M., and Wright, K. (eds.), ‘Ruling Sexualities: Gender, Sexuality and the Crown’, Royal Studies Journal, 6.2 (2019), 26-32. [Special issue of the RSJ of the proceedings of the Kings & Queens 7 conference held at Hampton Court Palace and the University of Winchester in July 2018.]