New Museum Podcast: Queering Museums

A new podcast began in February to mark LGBTQ+ month and is seeking to give an insight into the different way that LGBTQ+ museum workers and people in related fields are changing and shaping museum practice and museums themselves.

In it's first week, Queering Museums focused on not only the importance of telling queer histories in museums to address how they have long been ignored or silenced, but also the how important it is for young people and the LGBTQ+ community to see their history represented, as well as the different ways that museums and museum professionals are trying to do it.   

Each episode features interviews with people from different museums, the project doesn’t limit itself to a particular project or approach. This includes Margaret Middleton who talks about the importance of language, including the family friendly language, that makes space for children from families in all their shapes and constellations (see poster below). Their is also a discussion about how the stories and objects are often already there in museums collections, but have been hidden or obscured by euphemism (great example given about soldiers in the American Civil War). It’s also great to hear from people who work in “less obvious” positions in the museum infrastructure, or those discussing the ways that different types of museum approach the the topics (e.g. Episode 3 when talking about science museums and centres). 

Margaret Middleton’s poster summary of family friendly language, buy it here.

The podcast quality is great and the production is slick, which makes it a pleasure to listen to. You can download it via iTunes, listen on Soundcloud or sign up using the podcast app of your choice. And don’t forget to follow their profile on Twitter and those of the masterminds behind the project: Sacha Coward, Russell Dornan and Shaun O’Boyle. 

Current Episodes: 

Related reading, projects and exhibitions:

QueeringTheMuseum.org An online resource that states: “We focus on museums due to their ability to shape and define the communities in which we live. QTM believes that museums have a responsibility to account for the role played in constructing normalized ideas of race, gender and sexuality.”

Never Going Underground exhibition at the People’s History Museums in Manchester, opened last week by Ian McKellen and telling the history of the figt for LGBTQ+ rights. 

The National Trust’s page on Exploring LGBTQ history at their sites. An interesting looks at how the LGBTQ+ stories become hidden or obscured, but not all are lost forever. Working together with Leicester School of Museum Studies to create a legacy from the 2017 anniversary of partial decriminalisation. 

Historic England’s Pride of Place project has a list of aims and objectives, not least - as the body that administers listed buildings in the UK - "nominate buildings or landscapes for consideration for local heritage listing on the basis of their significance to LGBTQ histories”.     A blogpost by the Te Papa Museum of New Zealand about their LGBTIQ+ collections and their importance in making the histories visible. 

The National Archive’s page on the Queer City project. 

If you know of any other resources, projects, podcasts or websites that you think should be inclided, get in touch. 

Listen here

We’re Not That Hard to Find: Hiring Diverse Museum Staff

An infographic based on the guidelines by Joy Bailey-Bryant from the Jan/Feb edition of the AAM’s Museum about ways that museums can change their hiring and employment practices to encourage a more diverse and representative workforce. 

Rather than just repeating the data we already know about the worrying lack of diversity in many areas of museum education and employment, this attempts to unpick some of the causes, offering concrete advice about engaged museum might enact change and help recruit a more diverse workforce. The reasons for a lack of diversity in the museum field are manifold, but this addresses some of the mechanisms that are in place that can tackled, such as unpaid internships, proper career support and management of existing staff, where positions are advertised, and looking more deeply at applicants to see identify skill sets that aren't necessarily formal qualifications. 

As classically interdisciplinary places of learning, museums can only thrive when their perspectives are as diverse as the audiences and communities that they serve. If museums seek to be representative, then their staffing and institutions need to be as well. We know that speaking for marginalised voices and groups is inadequate, here’s how to do something about it. 

Other interesting resources and links

Posts on this blog that are of relevance:

If you know of any more projects or resources of interest, please feel free to submit them here. 

Deana Lawson. Assemblage. 2010. Installation view at MoMA PS1 as part of the Greater New York 2010 exhibition (May 23–October 18, 2010). Photo by Matthew Septimus

Click the picture for a video interview with the artists on the MOMA blog and the full article.

"Let's say you work at an organization that mostly caters to a middle and upper-class, white audience. Let's say you have a sincere interest in reaching and working with more ethnically, racially, and economically diverse audiences. What does it take to make that happen?"

Interesting guest post from Julia Brucker about how her institution runs tours and discussions in the museum specially for people who speak English as a second language.

Is Vienna really so different?

Reading the free newspaper on the bus the other day I came across an advert: "Vienna is different - me too!" (Wien ist anders - ich auch!) it proudly proclaimed. The description for the project read:

Now, this sounded amazing. I am an immigrant to this city and country, a country with a much stronger than average far-right scene (the beginning of this decade they were in a coalition with the Conservatives and got more than 20% at the most recent election) and documented unease and discussion about school classes where a large proprtion of children don't speak German well. But, when I visited the homepage (link above) I was actually really shocked to discover that 'diversity' was being celebrated through four interviews, 2 men, 2 women. All four white, all four professionals. Is the the acceptable face of immigration, diversity and vitality in Vienna?

Josef Penninger (pictured) is a geneticist. It's not clear from his interview where he is from (his name is certainly from this neck of the woods), but he's married to a Chinese lady. Ivona Brandic came to Austria as a refugee when she was a teenager (from Bosnia), but now works in computers and speaks fluent German, she mentions colleagues from Nigeria, Vietnam, Brazil. Monika Henzinger is also a computer person. She is German and lived in the US for a while, working for Google. She naively states that she thinks "everyone is welcome in the museums, churches and palaces in Vienna and nobody is excluded." I don't even know where to start with that. Churches? Palaces? Museums? What about education in general? Jobs? Coffee houses? Society? She does mention that perhaps this is easier for Europeans. But I think she means easier for people who don't look different and have German as a mother tongue.

Andreas Gebesmair is a sociologist and gives more thoughtful consideration to the questions put to him and is quick to acknowledge that his experience as a white, Austrian male will of course differ dramatically from other people and groups. He also raises the point that certain types of diversity are seen as 'chic', and preferred to others. An important point he illustrates with the examples of world-music and cookery.

So, this project doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Where exactly is the diversity? Vienna has a large Turkish minority, where is their representation? Diversity emcompasses religion too, how about someone talking about what it means to be Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Jehovah's Witness in Vienna? Our interests also underline our differences, why are we only talking to professionals/academics? What about teachers? Perhaps they have an inetresting story to tell about how they perceive their place in this city, or their experiences in the classroom with diverse classes?

The project seems only to offer a voice to those who have suceeded in finding their place in this society and in doing so silences the ongoing struggles faced by those who don't speak the language well (or at all), don't succeed in an educational system which isn't always tailored to their 'diverse' needs and find themselves marked out as 'other' in this predominantly white, Catholic and conservative society.