Museum Queeries

This book explores Two-Spirit and LGBTTQ* contributions to and interventions in museums and museum studies, both as a means of addressing structural exclusions and of opening new modes of productive inquiry and activism. Building on the inroads that have been made into existing museological practice and scholarship, the collection brings new voices and concerns to the field. For the contributors to this volume, "queering the museum" is not only about addressing representations of gender and sexuality, but also challenging white privilege, racism, and settler colonialism among other structures of oppression as they operate alongside and with heteronormativity, homophobia, and transphobia in and beyond museums, archives, and galleries. To challenge these norms in the context of museums and other knowledge producing institutions means that "queering" must also, simultaneously and inextricably, be decolonial. That is, queering and decolonizing are inseparable strategies if we understand that heteronormativity and gender binaries are constructions that stem from colonial logics and are upheld by colonial institutions. The book features essays by artists, curators, and scholars—emerging and established—from a range of disciplines including Art History, Cultural Studies, Curatorial Studies, English, Indigenous Studies, Museum Studies, and Women's and Gender Studies.