Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism

325 Pages·2020·10.962 MB·English

by  Joshua G. Adair and Amy K. Levin

MUSEUMS, SEXUALITY, AND GENDER
ACTIVISM
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 repre-
sentations 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 USA 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 anthro-
pology. The book will also spark interest among museum practitioners, public archivists, and
scholars researching related topics.
Joshua G. Adair is an associate professor of English at Murray State University, where he
also serves as coordinator of Gender & Diversity Studies. Adair’s work, whether in literary,
historical, or museum studies, examines the ways we narrate – and silence – gender and
sexuality; it has appeared in over fifty scholarly and creative nonfiction journals.
Amy K. Levin served as Director of Women’s Studies, Coordinator of Museum Studies,
and Chair of English at Northern Illinois University for twenty-one years before beginning a
new career as an independent scholar in 2016. Most recently, Levin was a visiting professor
in Public History at the University of Amsterdam in fall 2017.
MUSEUM MEANINGS
Series Editors
Richard Sandell and Christina Kreps
Museums have undergone enormous changes in recent decades; an ongoing process of
renewal and transformation bringing with it changes in priority, practice and role as well as
new expectations, philosophies, imperatives and tensions that continue to attract attention
from those working in, and drawing upon, wide ranging disciplines.
MuseumMeaningspresentsnewresearchthatexploresdiverseaspectsoftheshiftingsocial,cultural
andpoliticalsignificanceofmuseumsandtheiragencybeyond,aswellaswithin,theculturalsphere.
Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and international perspectives and empirical investigation are
broughttobearontheexplorationofmuseums’relationshipswiththeirvariouspublics(andanalysis
ofthewaysinwhichmuseumsshape–andareshapedby–suchinteractions).
Theoreticalperspectivesmightbedrawnfromanthropology,culturalstudies,artandarthis-
tory, learning and communication, media studies, architecture and design and material culture
studiesamongstothers.Museumsareunderstoodverybroadly–toincludeartgalleries,historic
sitesandotherculturalheritageinstitutions–asaretheirrelationshipswithdiverseconstituencies.
Thefocuson therelationshipofthemuseumtoitspublicsshiftstheemphasis fromobjects
and collections and the study of museums as text, to studies grounded in the analysis of
bodies and sites; identities and communities; ethics, moralities and politics.
Learning in the Museum
George Hein
Colonialism and the Object
Empire, Material Culture and the Museum
Edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn
Museum Activism
Edited by Robert R. Janes and Richard Sandell
Exhibitions for Social Justice
Elena González
Museums and Sites of Persuasion
Politics, Memory and Human Rights
Joyce Apsel and Amy Sodaro
Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism
Edited by Joshua G. Adair and Amy K. Levin
https://www.routledge.com/Museum-Meanings/book-series/SE0349
MUSEUMS, SEXUALITY,
AND GENDER ACTIVISM
Edited by Joshua G. Adair and Amy K. Levin
Firstpublished2020
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CONTENTS
List of figures viii
List of contributors x
Acknowledgments xviii
PARTI
Frameworks 1
Joshua G. Adair
1 Introduction: Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism 5
Amy K. Levin
2 Chicana Feminism, Anzalduian Borderland Practices, and Critiques
of Museology 21
Amanda K. Figueroa
3 Warning! Heteronormativity: A Question of Ethics 31
Nikki Sullivan and Craig Middleton
PARTII
Dismantling the Master’s House? 39
Amy K. Levin
A. Major Institutions 43
4 Sex and Sensitivities: Exhibiting and Interpreting Shunga at the
British Museum 45
Stuart Frost
5 Activists on the Inside: The Victoria and Albert Museum LGBTQ
Working Group 57
Zorian Clayton and Dawn Hoskin
vi Contents
6 Remolding the Museum: In Residence at the V&A 69
Matt Smith
B. Alternate Spaces 79
7 Pop-Up or Permanent? The Case of the Mardi Gras Museum 81
Tuan Nguyen
8 Emptied, Displaced, Assimilated: Spatial Politics of Gender in Ankara
Ulucanlar Prison Museum 90
Özge Kelekçi and Meral Akba¸s
9 Death of a Museum Foretold? On Sexual Display in the Time of AIDS
in India 101
Rovel Sequeira
10 Lost Objects and Missing Histories: HIV/AIDS in the Netherlands 113
Manon S. Parry and Hugo Schalkwijk
PARTIII
Bodies in the Museum? 127
Joshua G. Adair
A. Indigenous Bodies 131
11 Kent Monkman’s Shame and Prejudice: Artist Curation as Queer
Decolonial Museum Practice 133
Ann Cvetkovich
12 All that Moves Us: Bodies in Land 145
Camille Georgeson-Usher
B. Bodies of Ambiguity 155
13 The Future of Museological Display: Chitra Ganesh’s
Speculative Encounters 157
Natasha Bissonauth
14 Nonbinary Difference: Dionysus, Arianna, and the Fictive Arts of
Museum Photography 167
Åsa Johannesson and Clair Le Couteur
PARTIV
Acts of Resistance 181
Amy K. Levin
A. Unruly Women 185
Contents vii
15 The Absent History of Female Volunteers at the Art Gallery of Toronto 187
Irina D. Mihalache
16 From Handmade Underwear to the Labor Movement: Women’s
History at Digital Museum 197
Jana Sverdljuk
17 Recording Change: Collecting the Irish Abortion Rights
Referendum, 2018 207
Brenda Malone
B. Problematic Narratives 217
18 Never Going Underground: Community Coproduction and the Story of
LGBTQ+ Rights 219
Catherine O’Donnell
19 Curating Gertrude Stein: Identity Politics in the Exhibition Catalogue 231
Hayden Hunt
20 “A Battlefield All Their Own”: Selling Women’s Fictions as Fact at
Plantation Museums 239
Joshua G. Adair
PARTV
Thinking Outside the Binary Box 253
Amy K. Levin
21 On Gender Fluidity and Photographic Portraiture 255
Michael Petry
22 Never a Small Project: Welcoming Transgender Communities into
the Museum 265
Mirjam Sneeuwloper, Amy K. Levin, Colline Horstink and
Yvo Manuel Vas Dias
23 “A Museum Can Never Be Queer Enough”: The Van Abbemuseum as
a Testing Ground for Institutional Queering 278
Anne Rensma, Daniel Neugebauer and Olle Lundin
24 Conclusion 288
Joshua G. Adair
Index 294
FIGURES
4.1 A samurai makes love to a young man, and a woman adjusts their
bedding. Opening scene from a painted scroll with twelve erotic
scenes, early 1600s 51
5.1 Rubyyy Jones at the “Queer & Now” Friday Late in February 2015 63
6.1 A 31 Note Love Song (detail), Black Parian, 2015. Victoria and Albert
Museum, London 71
6.2 When All Is Equal, Black Porcelain, 2016. Victoria and Albert
Museum, London 72
6.3 From Butch to Camp. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 75
8.1 One of the emptied units and yards. Ulucanlar Prison Museum,
Ankara 94
9.1 Skeletons in the Closet. Antarang Museum, Mumbai 104
11.1 Installation view of Scent of a Beaver in Shame and Prejudice: A Story of
Resilience. Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 2017. Curated by
Kent Monkman 136
11.2 Installation view of Starvation Table in Shame and Prejudice: A Story of
Resilience. Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 2017. Curated by
Kent Monkman 138
12.1 Still from Melissa General, Reclamation, 2014 150
14.1 Arianna (Sculptura Antica), n.d. Photographer unknown. Archivio
Fotografico dei Musei Capitolini 168
14.2 Dionysus and Arianna. 169
14.3 Dionysus and Arianna, 2018 174
16.1 Screenshot of a search fragment: Kvinnehistorie [women’s story] 202
17.1 Repeal banner, knitted by Anne Phalen, using the Maser Design 210
18.1 Never Going Underground: The Fight for LGBT+ Rights exhibition.
People’s History Museum, Manchester, UK 223
Listoffigures ix
19.1 Gertrude Stein sitting on a sofa in her Paris studio, with a portrait of
her by Pablo Picasso 235
21.1 Untitled, from Looking Out, Looking in, 2015 260
22.1 Transmission exhibition. Amsterdam Museum, June 17–September 18,
2016 270
23.1 Qwearing the Collection opening 283