Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

This paper takes as its starting point three claims commonly found in contemporary museological literature. The first is that museums are both shaped by and shape the socio-political landscapes in which they operate, and are thus implicated in systems of power and privilege. The second is that despite growing sectoral concerns around inclusion, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) his/stories and lives continue to be largely absent in museums internationally, and this negatively impacts LGBTIQ+ identified people, their families and allies in a wide range of ways. The third is that museums can, and I contend, should, be active participants in the articulation of critically engaged and socially transformative ways of seeing, knowing, being, doing. Moving beyond the kinds of approaches offered by social inclusion and human rights frameworks, this paper elaborates a “queering” of contemporary curatorial practices, the often invisible assumptions that inform them, and the ethico-political effects they produce.