The Queer Museum

Museums enjoy a high level of credibility: they are attributed with the potential to reinforce values like diversity, participation, and openness in a society. Historically, however, museums have tended to be representatives of normative values. Collections and exhibitions generally reflect patriarchal, binary, and heterosexual gender norms. But what about ways of life and identity constructions beyond this ‘heterosexual matrix’? If museums tend to portray heteronormative images, this raises the question of alternative approaches. In this workshop, we will examine possibilities of incorporating queer content in museums. We will explore ways of pluralizing narratives and discuss unresolved questions such as: How are the stories of lesbian, gay, trans-, bi-, and intersexual participants included, documented, researched, represented, and communicated? How is it possible to disrupt images of hegemonic masculinity and femininity in collections and exhibitions? What alternative bodies of knowledge are there, and what are their limits? What issues can be addressed using an intersectional focus, and how does the relationship between the audience and the museum change because of it? Using a combination of theory and practice, we will survey the field of queer museum work and explore the qualities, challenges, and potentials of gender-sensitive collection, exhibition, and education.