Curating Prejudice and Pride: Recognising Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Lives in Brisbane: what it means to be human

ABSTRACT

The experience, as a lesbian feminist, of curating a city museum's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history exhibition is discussed through conversation, reflection, and reference to contemporary museum thought. The processes of engaging communities and of juggling the political realities of diverse interests, including that of the city government, raise issues for feminist activism. Effective changes for individuals and systems can be brought about, not by storming the bastions of power, but through curating memories and meanings to create affecting experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist curating
• social history museums
• Museum of Brisbane
• lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer
• community engagement

Acknowledgements

My abiding appreciation goes to Jo Besley, who has in so many ways been my companion and mentor on my journey of museum work. She encouraged me to contribute this article and generously gave her time and ideas to early conceptions of the work. Jo also readily agreed to recording our conversation reflecting on Prejudice and Pride and to having excerpts from the transcript reproduced here. My thanks also to the Museum of Brisbane for making available details and excerpts about the exhibition planning and delivery.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹Carol Low, “Taking to the Streets: A Rather Personal Review,” Queensland Review 14, no. 1 (2007): 123–128.

²Our ongoing research to identify other museums, including city-run museums that had done similar work, revealed there were none with such scope in the social history field.

³QAHC was the key statewide organisation providing health and community services to LGBTQ people. It is now called Queensland AIDS Council.

⁴Joanna Besley, recorded conversation with the author, 14 December 2014.

⁵ Prejudice and Pride, “Spaces and Places” (introductory text panel, Brisbane: Museum of Brisbane, 2010).

⁶ Prejudice and Pride, “Dyke Bridge” (extract from text panel, Brisbane: Museum of Brisbane, 2010).

⁷ Prejudice and Pride, “Carmen's House” (text panel, Brisbane: Museum of Brisbane, 2010).

⁸Maura Reilly, “Towards a Curatorial Activism” (keynote paper presented at Civil Partnerships? Queer and Feminist Curating, Tate Modern Art Gallery, London, May 18, 2012), http://www.org.uk/context-comment/video/civil-partnerships-queer-and-feminist-curating-video-recordings (accessed December 12, 2014).

⁹ Prejudice and Pride, “Focus Groups” (planning documents, Brisbane: Museum of Brisbane, 2010). The focus groups’ aim was “to inform and engage some members of the LGBT communities in Brisbane in the exhibition at the Museum of Brisbane”. The objectives were “To offer info on the timing, scope, venue and approach of the exhibition; to seek input on the content and approach, items for loan, contacts; to stimulate and explore public program proposals”.

¹⁰Clive Moore, “Twenty Years On,” History Australia 8, no. 1 (2010): 252–254.

¹¹ Prejudice and Pride (planning documents, Brisbane: Museum of Brisbane, 2010).

¹²Ibid.

¹³Sharon Macdonald, “Unsettling Memories: Intervention and Controversy over Difficult Public Heritage,” in Heritage and Identity: Engagement and Demission in the Contemporary World, ed. Marta Anico and Elsa Peralta (London: Routledge, 2009), 93–104. MacDonald writes, “the incorporation of previously excluded memories into the public sphere does not simply expand the remit of what is included and increase the number of ‘voices’ represented; it may also unsettle and disrupt existing accounts of the past” (93).

¹⁴Gavin Grindon, “What Do Disobedient Objects Do to the Museum? What Do Museums Do to the Disobedient Objects?” (panel paper, Curating Conflicts conference, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, November 8, 2014).

¹⁵ Taking to the Streets: Two Decades That Changed Brisbane 1965–1985 was a 2006 exhibition depicting twenty years of radical protest in Brisbane. Remembering Goodna: Stories from a Queensland Mental Hospital presented the difficult and complex history of Queensland's oldest and largest mental hospital, which was founded in 1865.

¹⁶See Clive Moore, Sunshine and Rainbows: Development of Gay and Lesbian Culture in Queensland (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2001).

¹⁷Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue, “CAN'T/WON'T” (paper presented at Civil Partnerships? Queer and Feminist Curating conference, London).

¹⁸The much-loved Reverend Ivor Holmans.

¹⁹Reilly, “Towards a Curatorial Activism.”

²⁰A museum's responsibility to the communities it engages with is of even more crucial concern when the “disrupting” stories are ones of loss, pain and struggle, and the risk of re-traumatisation. See Gaynor Kavanagh's article “Remembering Ourselves in the Work of Museums: Trauma and the Place of the Personal in the Public,” in Museums, Society, Inequality, ed. Richard Sandell (London: Routledge, 2002), 110–22.

²¹Helen Ricketts, “Introductory Remarks” (presented at the Civil Partnerships? Queer and Feminist Curating conference, London). Helen Ricketts here points us to the work of Anthony Huberman and affective curating. See Anthony Huberman, “Take Care,” in Circular Facts, ed. Mai Abu ElDahab, Binna Choi, and Emily Pethick (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2011), 9–17, http://www.theartistsinstitute.org/MEDIA/take%20care.pdf (accessed December 12, 2014).

²²Phil Browne, personal correspondence, January 6, 2015.

²³Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer.

²⁴The Story Bridge is an iconic inner-city bridge over the Brisbane River.

²⁵Mark O'Neill (unpublished paper) cited in Gaynor Kavanagh, Dream Spaces: Memory and the Museum (London: Leicester University Press, 2000), 2.