LGBTQI+ Representation in the Museum Ecosystem of Buenos Aires

Abstract

Prior to the emergence of social and critical museology, a normativist discourse suffused with a white, male, heterosexual, bourgeois perspective prevailed within museums. Any discourse that did not fit into that legitimising pattern would simply be silenced and forgotten. Accordingly, the memory of the LGBTQI+ community was excluded from the museums of the city of Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, from a strongly activist and self-administrative standpoint, various members of the queer community managed to safeguard documentation and objects relating to their past living conditions, which are marked by injustice, struggle and discrimination of all kinds. In the heat of successive debates surrounding the Equal Marriage Act (2010) and the Sexual Identity Act (2012), the visibility of the art and history of the collective increased and entered the agendas of the media and the museum. This article gives an account of the heterogeneous museum ecosystem of the Argentine capital in terms of inclusion of the memories of the LGBTQI+ community, both in collections policy and exhibition programming.