The Art of Feminist-Queering the Museum: Gate-leaking

Abstract

This paper takes part in the ongoing debate around how museums have begun to address LGBTQI+ and feminist issues in the 21st century. While Portugal is a particularly interesting country to consider, given that it has passed some of the most advanced legislation on LGBTQI+ rights in Europe (Santos 2012), this progressivism is not reflected in Portuguese museum practices, given that gender museology has been slow to emerge (Vaquinhas 2014). After briefly contextualising initiatives addressing gender in Portuguese art museums, we present as a case study Trazer a margem para o centro (Bringing the Margin to the Centre), a series of three talks hosted by the Berardo Collection Museum, which is considered Portugal’s primary modern and contemporary art museum. Unlike previous initiatives in art museums, which were museum-led, the series of talks was led by the small intersectional feminist collective FACA.

A sociologist (Rita Grácio) and the three members of FACA (Andreia Coutinho, Laura Falé and Maribel Sobreira) designed and conducted the three talks that constitute the initiative Bringing the Margin to the Centre. Grácio designed and conducted the qualitative study of the audiences that attended Bringing the Margin to the Centre. This study consisted of participant observation at the event series, at which an adapted version of the Personal Meaning Mapping technique (Falk and Storksdieck 2005) was applied; semi-structured phone interviews with participants were then conducted after the event (Falk and Dierking 2011). The main findings show this event raised awareness among cisgender visitors with heteronormative perspectives and provided a space for counter-narratives of the queer community, showing the role of collective curatorial activism and museums in promoting gender equality and inclusiveness, if acting as gate-leakers, rather than as gatekeepers. Hence, museums can provide lessons to other organisations interested in promoting diversity and inclusion.

Keywords:

• Art museum
• Collective curatorial activism
• Queer narratives
• Museum audiences
• Inclusive organisations

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Berardo Collection Museum, Cristina Gameiro and all the museum staff; the Lisbon Feminist Festival, the activists and all the participants in the talks. They also thank Rita Alcaire for her insightful comments.

Notes

1 FACA is not an acronym, but roughly translates from Portuguese to ‘The Knife’.

2 Lisbon’s Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a form of citizen’s participation in the governance of the City of Lisbon, whereby citizens can decide on a fraction of the city’s budget, by submitting proposals for the city and/or vote for the projects they would like to see included in the following-year budget (https://op.lisboaparticipa.pt/o-que-e-o-op).

3 The words have previously been agreed upon with FACA, and were based on the theme of each talk. PMM of Talk 1 used the word: ‘Margins’; PMM of Talk 2 used the word ‘Queer’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rita Grácio

Rita Grácio holds a PhD in Sociology from Exeter University, UK. She is currently a postdoctoral Researcher for the project ‘muSEAum’ (PTDC/EGE-OGE/29755/2017) at Lusófona University, Portugal.

Andreia C. Coutinho

Andreia C. Coutinho is a museum educator and illustrator. She has a BA in Fine Arts from FBAUL (2009) and a Communication Design: Illustration MA from Kingston University London (2015). Coutinho has worked in museums since 2010, both in Portugal and in the UK; she is also a co-creator of Colectivo FACA, a curatorial activism collective based in Lisbon.

Laura Falé

Laura Tecedeiro Sequeira Falé holds an MA degree in Political Philosophy (2015). She is a queer activist and educator and a co-creator of Colectivo FACA. Falé is a graduate student in Management and Finance at ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon.

Maribel Sobreira

Maribel Mendes Sobreira is an architect with an MA in Philosophy from the University of Lisbon (2016); she is currently a PhD student at the University of Lisbon in the field of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art. Sobreira is also a research member of the Centre of Philosophy at the University. She was a cultural mediator both at the Cultural Centre of Belém and at the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon. She is a co-creator of Colectivo FACA.