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