Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism

Joshua Adair, Amy Levin, Joshua G. Adair, Amy K. Levin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429514906
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Studi museali

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.

PART I

Frameworks

Joshua G. Adair

In the world of scholarship – museum-related or otherwise – there is no last word, thankfully. We can only hope to offer the latest word, because the ways we conduct museum work, and our frameworks for theorizing those practices, grow and change, perennially adapting to issues and perspectives not previously considered – or perhaps even recognized – as well as redressing those that went unaddressed for myriad reasons. We thinkers and practitioners and our GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) spaces are forever works in progress – if we are serious about ourselves and our work, that is.

The last word in this collection’s title – activism – is a word my coeditor and I insisted appear prominently since it is the work of this volume. In many ways, we argue, it should always be the last word where museums are concerned since it is a word without rest – one which insists upon perpetual improvement and an engagement that forecloses finality. It proudly announces that we have problems to fix and that no solution, however radical, is likely to settle an issue permanently. Instead, we must remain active, alert, and open to a way of thinking and working that does not clamor for conclusion.

Engaging effectively in activist practice demands specific sensibilities; it welcomes dissent, difference, and disruption. As scholars and practitioners, we must also admit that in many ways we have been getting it wrong – and that undoubtedly we will unintentionally repeat those mistakes and/or invent new ones in attempting to chart improved paths and possibilities. It helps to have a healthy sense of humility, and cultivating a little campiness does not hurt either. Above all, honesty and a willingness to engage multiple perspectives must form the framework for creating museums that do not exist in a state of inertia, but that enliven, enrich, and energize.

Jack Halberstam, in his 2011 monograph The Queer Art of Failure, offers insight that is useful here, especially when considering the ways we have failed to create institutions capable of achieving such goals. He argues,

What kinds of reward can failure offer us? Perhaps most obviously, failure allows us to escape the punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage human development with the goal of delivering us from unruly childhoods to orderly and predictable adulthoods. Failure preserves some of the wondrous anarchy of childhood and disturbs the supposedly clean boundaries between adults and children, winners and losers. And while failure certainly comes accompanied by a host of negative affects, such as disappointment, disillusionment, and despair, it also provides the opportunity to use these negative affects to poke holes in the toxic positivity of contemporary life.

(Halberstam 2011, 3)

If we scholars and practitioners were not failing – at least on some, if not many, levels – there would be no need for this collection. Rather than feeling defeated, however, we all must find opportunities for new possibilities in failure – even if those too are ultimately rejected – and a path forward.

As Halberstam notes, “In some sense we have to untrain ourselves so that we can read the struggles and debates back into questions that seem settled and resolved” (2011, 11). This “Frameworks” section proposes to do just that: highlight what is not working and confront our failures forcefully. Halberstam’s negative approach reveals new possibilities by focusing less upon positive outcomes and glowing feedback, and narrowing in upon problems, aporia, and even pain. It is in these places – and states of being – that we may begin to postulate and practice as we prime ourselves to fail better. Of the many conditions necessary to arrive at that end, we must focus upon the activist tactics of resistance, speaking truth to power, and perhaps most importantly, persistence.

Amy K. Levin, my coeditor, demonstrates such persistence when introducing this collection using those tactics and – to illustrate my observations about last and latest words – hearkens back to the 2010 collection Gender, Sexuality, and Museums (GSM). When I worked on that collection as an editorial assistant and a new PhD, I felt certain we were compiling a definitive volume that would establish the last word on many of the subjects addressed therein. Thankfully, I could not have been more wrong. While GSM has become a foundational text in many ways, it has also opened the sluice gates to a torrent of new words, ideas – and most importantly – conversations. Ten years later, the book continues to be used frequently, but we both recognize the need to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about how museums engage gender, gender identity, sex, and sexuality through activism.

Rather than resting on laurels or the reputation of that original collection, Levin’s introduction draws us into a world that feels – and indeed is – remarkably different from the one in which we lived a decade ago. Many institutions – large and small, permanent and temporary – have made strides to improve queer visibility and gender parity. Not all have succeeded and many have not gone far enough. Levin reminds us, along with the other authors in this section, that certain kinds of people and practices continue to garner favor over others. Many stories remain silenced; visitors still struggle to see themselves in certain institutions. Worse still, many minority individuals of all sorts never step foot inside such places because their alienation has continued too long, and they fear change simply is not possible.

Focusing upon the intricacies and ethics of representation, Amanda K. Figueroa explores the ways in which a Chicana feminist museology, underpinned by the theories and insights of the late Gloria Anzaldúa, may help all parties connected to museums – practitioners, scholars, visitors – learn to accept and even enjoy feeling uncomfortable, uncertain, and indefinite. Figueroa traverses fascinating terrain as she draws upon Anzaldúa’s concepts regarding border/liminal spaces, fusing them with the physicality of museums and their role in producing identity through certain curatorial practices. Such practices, she contends with reference to Anzaldúa, often have a destabilizing effect that leaves visitors questioning who constructs and solidifies identity, as each party plays a role in creation and confusion.

Nikki Sullivan and Craig Middleton also offer a new framework for thinking about inclusion. They focus specifically upon the ethics of the ideal of inclusivity, highlighting the universalizing tactics frequently employed in official conversations about – and policies pertaining to – the representation of queer people in exhibits of all sorts. More timely than ever, their focus helps readers to consider the contradictions and conflicts inherent in negotiating the complexities of representation, authenticity, and the politics of policy. Too often, they conclude, difference is erased in favor of palatability and so-called progressiveness.

Rather than offering definitive pronouncements – last words, if you will – Levin, Figueroa, and Sullivan and Middleton present possibilities. Each chapter raises pivotal questions and then sets about modeling possibilities without ever claiming to have arrived at a sole solution. They exist in determined indeterminacy, gesturing toward productive possibilities underpinned by heavy-hitting scholarship and practice. Each charts not only the challenges we face, but forms a framework that opens out and suggests that the real solution we seek succeeds only when we consider a stopping point as a pivot rather than a terminus.

References

Halberstam, J. Jack. 2011. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

1

Introduction

Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism

Amy K. Levin

A chain of shops named Sissy Boy. A bus shelter advertisement depicting an androgynous black woman in a menswear-inspired suit with a stiletto heel over the leg of a nude man, tagged #notdressingmen. A male mannequin wearing a “dog suit,” a pleather mask with muzzle and small ears; chains; and tiny shorts. The talented transgender woman who sells the best quiche in the market on Saturday. A prime minister who attacks his far-right opponent with the epithet “a woman who makes herself as unattractive as possible” (“Wilders is ‘woman,’” 2017). The red light window down the block featuring a woman with an Eastern European name. Markers of gender and sexuality surround me in Amsterdam during the fall of 2017.¹

My aim here is not to reify stereotypes of the nation as a haven for sexual permissiveness. Issues related to gender and sexuality arise across the globe, and activists often respond. The #metoo campaign against sexual harassment has been prominent in Europe and the USA, and Donald Trump’s ill-chosen remarks about Pocahontas on November 27, 2017,² reveal the intersections of racism and sexism within the US right. In focusing primarily on the Netherlands, with a brief detour to an exhibition in the UK, I intend to survey the ways in which certain museums represent gender, sexuality, and more generally, diversity at a particular moment in time, in order to introduce topics discussed in this book.

In broader terms, Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism is designed to supplement the 2010 collection, Gender, Sexuality, and Museums: A Routledge Reader by including more recent content and filling gaps. Since the publication of the latter, additional books on its topics have appeared, and museum exhibitions have rendered diverse genders and sexualities more visible. While individuals who identify as LGBTQ+ or nonbinary have been largely invisible in museums, women have sometimes been too visible, as odalisques or nudes. Fortunately, museum and gallery displays have pursued new avenues in representing women as well as feminist and queer theory, which will be discussed in this text.

With its activist emphasis, this volume complements existing books. It is not our intent to survey all of these, but a few deserve mention. Kate Hill’s Women and Museums, 1850–1914: Modernity and the Gendering of Knowledge (2016) examines women’s roles as museum workers, object donors, visitors, and patrons. A key point is that “Museums and galleries both represented patriarchal values to women visitors [and women in other relations to the institutions], and offered them spaces in which to challenge those values” (119). This argument undergirds Mihalache’s chapter in this collection, but it also applies to the efforts of queer visitors, artists, and museum staff. Astute readers will note that strategies employed by cisgender straight women to influence exhibitionary institutions have been adopted by individuals who identify as LGBTQ+. These include volunteering to assist staff with relevant projects and joining advisory groups, like the one described in our chapter on the Amsterdam Museum. Similarly, Malin Hayden and Jessika Skrubbe’s chapters in their edited collection, Feminism is Still Our Name: Seven Essays on Historiography and Curatorial Practices (2010), complement the discussion of catalogue copy in this introduction and in Hayden Hunt’s chapter. Catalogues provide an extended view of exhibitions as well as information on how curators and other experts have thought about them. Most recently, Jenna Ashton’s massive two-volume collection, Feminism and Museums (2017, 2018), offers case studies from around the world. It focuses primarily on women-born-as-women and feminism without consistently exploring alterity in terms of gender, sexuality, and queerness. Gender is generally understood as binary, and neither volume includes extensive material on transgender.

Other works engage in contemporary dialogues about sex, gender, and sexuality as they relate to exhibitionary institutions. Jennifer Tyburczy’s Sex Museums (2016) begins with a description of how museums have participated in policing sex and sexuality. She surveys sexual displays, using the example of the Nazi exhibition of Degenerate Art to explain the linkage of sex and violence. Moving forward to exhibitions such as Hide/Seek at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, as well as a sex museum in Mexico, she demonstrates how the gallery may become a space in which national politics and attitudes toward sex and sexuality are performed. Articles in our book, such as Rovel Sequeira’s, draw similar connections. Tyburczy’s work is unusual in that it deals with pornography as well as sex, gender, and sexuality in museums. Institutions such as the British Museum and the Museum of Sex in New York have exhibited sexually explicit Japanese shunga (see Stuart Frost’s chapter in this book); however, Western pornography generally remains uninterrogated in exhibitionary institutions. Linley Sambourne House in London treats the owner’s pornographic photographs as art even as it presents them way at the top of the house. The Sex Museum in Amsterdam displays erotica and sex toys with little analysis. This institution’s primary purpose appears to be to titillate tourists rather than to educate. This lack of critical examination of museums and pornography is reflected in the limited amount of writing on the subject, although some exhibitions have been sex-positive and/or educate about sex.

The literature on LGBTQ+ themes is mixed. Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites is a 2015 text by Susan Ferentinos, who has worked with the US National Park Service on its guidelines for LGBTQ+ inclusion. A lengthy historical section allows for only limited discussion of museums and their relationship to individuals who identify as LGBTQ+. The author often renders her subjects as others: she refers to them as possessing “variant” or “alternative” sexualities. As we shall see, museums continue to take this approach as well.

In 2017, Richard Sandell published Museums, Moralities and Human Rights; despite the title, this book is largely about museums and representations of LGBTQ+ lives, an issue that Sandell perceives as directly connected to promoting human rights. The chapter on Alice Austen House in New York is especially valuable in its analysis of debates surrounding the creation of a historic house museum around the life of a lesbian woman. Moreover, while texts described above limit their discussion of the T in LGBTQ+, the chapter titled “The Transgender Tipping Point” introduces Sandell’s work with the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and the Scottish Transgender Alliance as an avenue into a discussion of strategies for exhibiting work related to transgender individuals in a respectful and appropriate manner. Sandell’s monograph focuses primarily on the USA and UK³ but was one of our inspirations in seeking chapters on transgender and nonbinary artists and exhibitions. This book is critically important for the equivalence it draws between museums’ diversity efforts and human rights work, a theme that underlies this collection as well, and is especially evident in the chapter by Kelekçi and Akbaş.

Nikki Sullivan and Craig Middleton’s Queering the Museum also takes a theoretical approach. The authors apply queer theory to the museum as a socially constructed system. They use this conceptual base to argue that curatorship remains implicitly heteronormative; even when museums attempt to be more inclusive, they fail because of the ove...