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2018
Queering Australian Museums addresses the problem of how queer or LGBTIQ communities can be further included in Australian museums on their own terms. It looks at four areas of museums—management, collections, exhibitions, and connections with audiences and communities—to consider barriers and enablers of queer inclusion in these often heteronormative institutions. Case studies of queer-inclusive efforts in public Australian museums are interpreted from institutional and community perspectives drawn from 25 interviews. The interviews are put into critical conversation with archival material and literature from museum studies and the emerging field of queer museology. The study evaluates the visibility of the history, cultures, and identities of queer communities in Australian museums. It establishes that many public representations of queerness have been driven by the efforts of LGBTIQ communities, particularly through community-based heritage organisations. It also gathers and reflects upon examples of critical queer inclusion that have occurred in public museums. Using these exemplars, it argues that queer communities should be empowered to make decisions about their own heritage with the support of museums and their unique attributes; that individual and organisational leadership, involving queer individuals and allies, should be brought to bear on this task; and that effectively navigating the tensions between museums and queer communities requires mutual understanding and accommodation. Through the process of queering the museum, it is suggested, each party might be transformed, leading to LGBTIQ diversity being valued as an integral part of society. The thesis addresses the gap in Australian museum studies literature on queer or LGBTIQ inclusion compared with Euro-American settings. It further contributes original case studies to the international field of queer museology, and to museum studies literature on including and empowering diverse communities. Both recognising the agency of queer communities and also engaging with the language and conventions of museums, it constructs a distinct account of how to navigate the historical tensions between the two. It thereby aims to enrich museum offerings for all audiences on the terms of those erstwhile excluded.
Museums today are demonstrating an increased commitment to LGBTQ communities through exhibitions that center their stories. These queer-focused exhibitions are valuable tools for broadening representation, but the messages they carry are only as strong as the institution’s commitment to queer inclusion. When queer narratives are limited to temporary exhibitions during Pride Month or isolated in queer-themed galleries, it suggests that they are “special interest” and unimportant. However, with the support of comprehensive queer inclusion, exhibitions can be stronger, more powerful tools for inclusion. This article explores queer inclusion in four tiers: programming, temporary exhibitions, interpretive strategy, and broad institutional commitment. This article first appeared in the journal Exhibition (Fall 2017) Vol. 36 No. 2 and is reproduced with permission. www.name-aam.org
Historic Environment
Mediating queer controversy in Australian museum exhibitions2016 •
The phrase ‘museums are safe spaces for unsafe ideas’ belies the reality that museums are often wary of discussing unsafe ideas, not to mention queer ideas which often fall under this classification. Yet the phrase follows from the aspiration that museums can do better—that they can be socially responsive and responsible, and that they can seek to include the diversity of communities they serve. The three exhibitions discussed are moments where their host institutions pursued the implications of the phrase leading to queer inclusiveness but also to controversy: 'Mapplethorpe' at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, in 1995; 'Becoming Visible' at the Constitutional Museum, Adelaide, in 1982; and 'Prejudice and Pride' at the Australian Museum, Sydney, in 1994. Controversy almost inevitably follows from unsafe and queer ideas, the issue becoming how to mediate rather than avoid it. The above museum moments together suggest directions for best museum and heritage practice based on progressive organisational cultures, strong leadership and openness to experimentation. In actively encouraging these three elements, museums can reaffirm and defend themselves as safe spaces for unsafe ideas.
MA thesis (Leiden University)
Performing Diverse Sexualities: Queer Curating or Curatorial Strategies of the Schwules Museum2018 •
2021 •
As I’m preparing for a day of museum meetings, I wonder if my young femme-domme-gender-queer-of-color aesthetics leaking through my fishnets, tattoos, and leather choker reveal “too much” about the queer I am whether or not I’m appropriate or belong in this space. This began when I moved up in positions. I was hired initially as a contract laborer in the education department in an off-site after-school art program, moved into temporary curatorial and installation, then temporary collections management, back to temporary curatorial and installation, and finally landed a full-time, then thought, permanent position in education as the teacher and student program coordinator at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Unapologetically queer throughout all those cycles of uncertain employment within the same institution driven on the concept of “la familia” (or the family), I remained hopeful that I could contribute to queering this institution. I insisted, but quickly realized tha...
Women & Performance
Queer curatorship: Performing the history of race, sex, and power in museumsRadical History Review
When the Erotic Becomes Illicit: Struggles over Displaying Queer History in a Mainstream Museum2012 •
Museum International
The Art of Feminist-Queering the Museum: Gate-leaking2020 •
This paper takes part in the ongoing debate around how museums have begun to address LGBTQI+ and feminist issues in the 21st century. While Portugal is a particularly interesting country to consider, given that it has passed some of the most advanced legislation on LGBTQI+ rights in Europe (Santos 2012), this progressivism is not reflected in Portuguese museum practices, given that gender museology has been slow to emerge (Vaquinhas 2014). After briefly contextualising initiatives addressing gender in Portuguese art museums, we present as a case study Trazer a margem para o centro (Bringing the Margin to the Centre), a series of three talks hosted by the Berardo Collection Museum, which is considered Portugal’s primary modern and contemporary art museum. Unlike previous initiatives in art museums, which were museum-led, the series of talks was led by the small intersectional feminist collective FACA. A sociologist (Rita Grácio) and the three members of FACA (Andreia Coutinho, Laura ...
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"Closets in the Museum: Homophobia and Art History"1999 •
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Queering Museums, Fostering Partnerships in Colombia2017 •
2015 •
Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society
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