Description
Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism examines the role of exhibitionary institutions in representing LGBTQ+ people, cisgender women, and nonbinary individuals. Considering recent gender and sexuality-related developments through a critical lens, the volume contributes significantly to the growing body of activist writing on this topic.
Building on Gender, Sexuality and Museums and featuring work from established voices, as well as newcomers, this volume offers risky and exciting articles from around the world. Chapters cover diverse topics, including transgender representation, erasure, and activism; two-spirit people, indigeneity, and museums; third genders; gender and sexuality in heritage sites and historic homes; temporary exhibitions on gender and sexuality; museum representations of HIV/AIDS; interventions to increase queer visibility and inclusion in galleries; LGBTQ+ staff alliances; and museums, gender ambiguity, and the disruption of binaries. Several chapters focus on areas outside the US and Europe, while others explore central topics through the perspectives of racial and ethnic minorities.
Containing contributions that engage in sustained critique of current policies, theory, and practice, Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism is essential reading for those studying museums, women and gender, sexuality, culture, history, heritage, art, media, and anthropology. The book will also spark interest among museum practitioners, public archivists, and scholars researching related topics.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
I. Frameworks
- Introduction: Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism, Amy K. Levin
- Chicana Feminism, Anzalduian Borderland Practices, and Critiques of Museology, Amanda K. Figueroa
- Warning! Heteronormativity: A Question of Ethics, Nikki Sullivan and Craig Middleton
- Sex and Sensitivities: Exhibiting and Interpreting Shunga at the British Museum Stuart Frost
- Activists on the Inside: the Victoria and Albert Museum LGBTQ Working Group, Zorian Clayton and Dawn Hoskin
- Remolding the Museum: In Residence at the V&A, Matt Smith
- Pop-up or Permanent? The Case of the Mardi Gras Museum, Tuan Nguyen
- Emptied, Displaced, Assimilated: Spatial Politics of Gender in Ankara Ulucanlar Prison Museum, Özge Kelekçi and Meral Akbaş.
- Death of a Museum Foretold? On Sexual Display in the Time of AIDS in India, Rovel Sequeira
- Lost Objects and Missing Histories: HIV/AIDS in the Netherlands, Manon S. Parry and Hugo Schalkwijk
- Kent Monkman’s Shame and Prejudice: Artist Curation as Queer and Decolonial Practice, Ann Cvetkovich
- All that Moves Us: Bodies in Land, Camille Georgeson-Usher
- The Future of Museological Display: Chitra Ganesh’s Speculative Encounters, Natasha Bissonauth
- Nonbinary Difference: Dionysus,
Arianna,and the Fictive Arts of Museum Photography, Åsa Johannesson and Clair Le Couteur - The Absent History of Female Volunteers at the Art Gallery of Toronto, Irina D. Mihalache
- From Handmade Underwear to the Labor Movement: Women’s History at Digital Museum, Jana Sverdljuk
- Recording Change: Collecting the Irish Abortion Rights Referendum, 2018, Brenda Malone
- Never Going Underground: Community Coproduction and the Story of LGBTQ+ Rights, Catherine O'Donnell
- Curating Gertrude Stein: Identity Politics in the Exhibition Catalogue, Hayden Hunt
- "[A] Battlefield All their Own": Selling Women’s Fictions as Fact at Plantation Museums, Joshua G. Adair
- On Gender Fluidity and Photographic Portraiture, Michael Petry
- Never A Small Project: Welcoming Transgender Communities into the Museum, Mirjam Sneeuwloper, Amy Levin, Colline Horstink, and Yvo Manuel Vas Dias
- "A Museum Can Never Be Queer Enough": The Van Abbemuseum as a Testing Ground for Institutional Queering, Anne Rensma, Daniel Neugebauer, and Olle Lundin
- Conclusion, Joshua G. Adair
II. Dismantling the Master’s House?
A. Major Institutions
B. Alternate Spaces
III. Bodies in the Museum?
A. Indigenous Bodies
B. Bodies of Ambiguity
IV. Acts of Resistance
A. Unruly Women
B. Problematic Narratives
V. Thinking Outside the Binary Box
Contributors
Index



