Collecting Queer: Exploring Museum Queering at the Burke Museum Collections

Authors:

• Liam Patrick Bryant, Museology Graduate Program
• Chair: Lane Eagles
• Hollye Keister, MA
• Dr. Benjamin Schmidt



Abstract:

The use of women, gender, and sexuality studies as a way to understand museums is a very new perspective for the field. This process—most often called “museum queering”—produced its first monograph in 2020 with Sullivan and Middleton’s, Queering the Museum. Considering the novelty of this work, its practical applications have yet to be explored in full. There is especially little work in understanding how these theories interact with objects, belongings, and specimens in museums, let alone how collections professionals can apply this study to their work. “Collecting Queer” considers the ways in which collections professionals can consider queer object in their museums, through traditional and novel museological lenses. This project produced a toolkit-guide which adapts and synthesizes federal guidelines, relevant theory, and current research into a step-by-step guide for collecting queer objects. This work was applied to the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in the form of professional development undertaken by collections, education, interpretive, and administrative staff. In completing training in this material, attendees expressed higher comfort and enthusiasm in engaging with it in a day-to-day level. The content of “Collecting Queer” is built to be re-interpreted in other galleries, libraries, archives, and museums as an introductory text for more robust literature to come.



Poster:

Download a copy of the project poster

Project Deliverable:

Collecting Queer: Exploring Museum Queering at the Burke Museum Collections

Video Presentation