Bi-focals, beards and butches: queering history in museums

Abstract

Historically, museums have catered to and represented some individuals, groups and histories to the exclusion and detriment of others. In his critique of this tendency Chris Taylor conceives museums ‘as instruments that intentionally shape cultural norms and values based on the dominant culture for society’. Like Taylor, many of those who are concerned by the exclusion of marginalised groups and histories advocate social inclusion as an ideal and a museological practice. Consequently, the last decade or so has seen the emergence of a number of temporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer plus (LGBTQ+) history exhibitions. At the same time, the active collecting of (what are perceived as) LGBTQ + objects in order to tell LGTBQ + histories has found its way onto the agenda of a growing number of museums. As we have argued in detail elsewhere, while such responses to past exclusions (and the material effects they produce) are not without value, they nevertheless all-too-often unintentionally reproduce the same logic that shaped exclusionary museological practices. In this article, we will elaborate what we see as the problematic epistemological underpinnings of social inclusion through the exploration of four assumptions that perpetuate heteronormative museological practice.