Notes on The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History

Abstract

The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History started life somewhere between a party and a temporary autonomous zone—a very temporary autonomous zone, because we were shut down by the police some five hours after we opened our doors. By then, over 300 people had crowded into my Brooklyn loft to experience more than twenty-five exhibits on topics ranging from lesbian communities in Haiti to seventeenth-century Baroque opera. A gingerbread replica of Stonewall, complete with sugar-cookie cops, shared a table with an altar to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. A timeline of American queer history—with nearly fifty hand drawn illustrations—snaked throughout the warren of small rooms my roommates had created from two-by and plastic. It was January 14, 2011, and I’d spent the last few months thinking about the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” from the Hide/Seek show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. I was furious, of course, but I also realized that the chances of my getting to DC to see the show were next to nil. They could have pulled the entire thing, and it wouldn’t have directly affected me. In fact, it probably wouldn’t have directly affected anyone I knew. I say this not to criticize Hide/Seek, but because in the context of the near total silence on the part of all museums, everywhere, with regards to queer history, the removal of one piece of art was simultaneously enraging and downright pedestrian. I vented on Facebook, which felt like pissing vinegar into an ocean already full of it: one more stream of hot invective disappearing with barely a splash. The worst part was that I couldn’t even really blame the National Portrait Gallery.