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Awkward Bastards12th March 2015
Queering the MuseumBirmingham Museum and Art Gallery
4th November 2010 – 27th February 2011
What is Queer?
• Queer’s can be used as an inclusive word for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.
• It also means ‘differing from the normal or usual in a way regarded as odd or strange’ and ‘to be put in a difficult or dangerous position’.
Photogravure from the Work of Edward Burne-Jones
Photogravure from the Work of Edward Burne-Jones
“…the portrait of Miss Dorothy Drew is most emphatically alive, almost alarmingly so! It has a queer kind of elfin charm”
Therefore rather than a queer exhibition, we
decided to “queer” the whole museum
Intervention Techniques:
• Queer as a Verb
• Queering Heterosexual Couplings • Historical Narratives • Questioning Collecting Policies • Slang and Popular Culture • Political Messages
Overarching themes: visual jokes, camp, double meanings, pathos & subterfuge
Queer as a Verb
Queering Heterosexual Couplings
Historical Narratives
Questioning Collecting Policies
Slang and Popular Culture
Social and Political Messages
Lessons Learnt
• Objects contain many stories and histories – curators make choices about what is told
• Freedom allowed to artists could be exploited more by
curators • Need to adapt collecting patterns and cataloguing terms
• If groups without large, unique bodies of material culture are to have a place in museums, we need to consider how we talk about objects
www.mattjsmith.com