#queering museums

New Museum Podcast: Queering Museums

A new podcast began in February to mark LGBTQ+ month and is seeking to give an insight into the different way that LGBTQ+ museum workers and people in related fields are changing and shaping museum practice and museums themselves.

In it's first week, Queering Museums focused on not only the importance of telling queer histories in museums to address how they have long been ignored or silenced, but also the how important it is for young people and the LGBTQ+ community to see their history represented, as well as the different ways that museums and museum professionals are trying to do it.   

Each episode features interviews with people from different museums, the project doesn’t limit itself to a particular project or approach. This includes Margaret Middleton who talks about the importance of language, including the family friendly language, that makes space for children from families in all their shapes and constellations (see poster below). Their is also a discussion about how the stories and objects are often already there in museums collections, but have been hidden or obscured by euphemism (great example given about soldiers in the American Civil War). It’s also great to hear from people who work in “less obvious” positions in the museum infrastructure, or those discussing the ways that different types of museum approach the the topics (e.g. Episode 3 when talking about science museums and centres). 

Margaret Middleton’s poster summary of family friendly language, buy it here.

The podcast quality is great and the production is slick, which makes it a pleasure to listen to. You can download it via iTunes, listen on Soundcloud or sign up using the podcast app of your choice. And don’t forget to follow their profile on Twitter and those of the masterminds behind the project: Sacha Coward, Russell Dornan and Shaun O’Boyle. 

Current Episodes: 

Episode 1: Voices 

Episode 2: Experiences 

Episode 3: Boundaries 

Related reading, projects and exhibitions:

QueeringTheMuseum.org An online resource that states: “We focus on museums due to their ability to shape and define the communities in which we live. QTM believes that museums have a responsibility to account for the role played in constructing normalized ideas of race, gender and sexuality.”

Never Going Underground exhibition at the People’s History Museums in Manchester, opened last week by Ian McKellen and telling the history of the figt for LGBTQ+ rights. 

The National Trust’s page on Exploring LGBTQ history at their sites. An interesting looks at how the LGBTQ+ stories become hidden or obscured, but not all are lost forever. Working together with Leicester School of Museum Studies to create a legacy from the 2017 anniversary of partial decriminalisation. 

Historic England’s Pride of Place project has a list of aims and objectives, not least - as the body that administers listed buildings in the UK - "nominate buildings or landscapes for consideration for local heritage listing on the basis of their significance to LGBTQ histories”.     A blogpost by the Te Papa Museum of New Zealand about their LGBTIQ+ collections and their importance in making the histories visible. 

The National Archive’s page on the Queer City project. 

If you know of any other resources, projects, podcasts or websites that you think should be inclided, get in touch. 

Welcome to the first #PunkLove Monthly Roundup!

On the first weekend of every month, we’ll be providing you with a series of cool links to stories, projects, and other awesome stuff that we’ve found on the web. We may also stick in there a few things we’ve loved offline during the month. Just because we’re angry punks, doesn’t mean we don’t have our softer side.

The list this month is pretty diverse, including upcoming events we want to alert you to, events which have been, projects ongoing and cool activist stuff.

February Round-up

Firstly, we want to start with LGBT History Month. This February was particularly special, this year being the 50th Anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. The heritage sector will be working to celebrate this event throughout the year, and this post from HLF gives an insight into the work of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum. Ian McKellen was also at the The People’s History Museum to open the new “Never Going Underground: The Fight for LGBT+ Rights” exhibition, so keep an eye open for events and online material related to that.

We also want to alert people to the Prejudice and Pride project, a collaboration between the National Trust and the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester, which will be informing the Trust’s 2017 programme, and contribute to a need in the heritage sector to willingly tackle histories they find challenging.

As part of LGBT History Month, the University of Oxford held a series of lectures, and this one, from CN Lester, talks about the need for queer/trans history, and the problems caused by historical trans erasure. It’s a timely reminder, in the present political climate, that a reliance on a nostalgic past that removes, or makes tragic, LGBTQIA+ lives in previous eras, is one which discounts the fullness of being queer, throughout the ages.

Another exciting new project is the podcast “Queering Museums”, highlighting the diverse voices from the LGBTQIA+ community working in and around the museum sector, the projects being developed and why representation is so goddam important. 

February also saw Museums Advocacy Day, an opportunity to make the case for the value of museums run by the American Alliance for Museums. This year, given the cuts happening in the States which threaten cultural organisations, it’s not surprising that it was quite...active.

There have been several actions museums have taken to show resistance to specific events and policies in recent weeks. For an overview, considering taking a look at the wearemuseums.com article “#MuseumActivism Trump’s presidency make museums go from soft power to counter power”.

Diversity in museum workforces and employment practices was also highlighted this month by the AAM with their “We’re not that hard to find: Hiring Diverse Museum Staff” feature. It’s a slightly refreshing take on the handwringing about how unrepresentative museum staff can be, offering concrete actions to overcome the mechanisms that exclude and hinder people from a broad range of backgrounds from flourishing in the sector and the importance of strategic planning. The Museum Association also has some of their sessions online from conference last year, “Working Class Heroes” broaches many of the topics highlighted in the report. Also check out the work of MuseumDetox.

Coming up in March

20th March will see the Culture24 LetsGetReal Conference at the Museum of London, questioning how museums can make themselves relevant to young people, weave digital into practice in a meaningful way, and understand what young people want from the cultural sector. It’s also worth noting, at this point, this We Are Museums article on the value of teen programming.

March 29th is also #MuseLocalLinks, which asks people to visit online collections and share an object representing where they live. It’s a fun idea!

Black Country Visual Arts have been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund Grant to bring together the Apna Heritage Archive in Wolverhampton, UK, pulling together historic and contemporary material of the Punjabi community in Wolverhampton from the 1960s to the present.

March is also Women’s History Month, and so I really want to draw your attention to the IndieGoGo for the East End Women’s Museum. There’s an interesting story behind how this came to be, so please go to check them out, and support them.

Sign-up for a free webinar on The Great Evolution of European Museums via NEMO on April 5th, which will look at prevailing trends over the last decades in museums, especially the shift towards museums as social agents. Hopefully this should offer a broader European perspective, getting us off the island a little.  

Showcase: Arts Emergency

Finally, we want to showcase a really important project that we can all get behind – Arts Emergency. They’re a reasonably new group, offering mentoring and support for young people from diverse backgrounds who want to get into the arts and culture industries. There are many of us who are aware that we are lucky to get any way into the industry that we have – right place, right time – but for whom it would be exceedingly difficult now. Why not offer something back? Give someone else a chance that they might not otherwise get. Their podcast also offers emerging artists and a broad range of people working in the cultural sector (both emerging and more established names) a platform to talk about their work.

See, being punk, as we’ve said before, doesn’t mean you have to believe in No Future. We’re fiercely keen that we remember what is yet to come. Despite appearing to be about remembering the past, museums and the heritage industry are just as much workers for the future, grounded and performing in the present. Especially when that present is filled with fear and sadness and intolerance.  

Current events demand that we do something. Say something. We said in the intro we have our softer side, but we also think that love is an incandescent thing, a tetchy anxiety and fierce bright rage. Harness them, and hope with all there is left in you that we can use them to do what is right.  

Book of the Month: Kylie Message, Museums and Social Activism: Engaged Protest

“This books aims to diminish the authority of polarised modes of thinking. Rather than seeing politics and culture as mutually exclusive terms, it seeks to demonstrate the productive exchanges that can occur when cultural and political sectors come into contact.”

“Curatorial activism can be understood as attempts by individuals to engage with, represent and often contribute to social and political protest and reform movements.”

Track of the Month: David Bowie, Heroes

“Though nothing will drive them away

We can beat them, just for one day