Find out about the complexities of queering an art gallery and why queering cultural institutions is so important, in this post by Bria.

Look! What do you see? What is missing? These are some of the central questions that begin the process of critically engaging with a museum or gallery’s display, space, ethos etc. Such questions are ones that have driven my own interest in heritage spaces, and their roles in civic society. Traditionally having been lauded as the bastions of civilization since their incarnations in early modern history, these institutions have, and continue to be, the bedrock of privileging white, cis-het, male British lives and outlooks over others. Anybody who falls out of that narrow bracket is either treated as an oddity or erased from the grand narrative of progress and conquest.

One of the many ways we can challenge and rectify this site of exclusion is by bringing to the forefront objects and stories that centre marginalised communities. The recently opened (Un)Defining Queer Exhibition questions and interrogates the ideas and practices behind the display of queer art and artists. Its intention is to not only highlight the contributions of queer artists, but to also challenge what it means to display queer art in a predominately cisheteronormative context. This is an exhibition that questions and challenges the word “queer” and all of its afterlives.

The Project Producer and Co-Curator of the exhibition, Dominic Bilton, started the online project, “Queering the Whitworth” in 2018 when he was a Visitor Team Assistant. He highlighted queer works in the Whitworth’s collection via social media, and ran bespoke tours of the collection. The project challenged the “dominant, heteronormative position that art history and the museum finds itself within” (Bilton, Queering the Whitworth, 2023).

Through this, it developed into a larger interrogation into our collection with a dedicated exhibition as the main output. Doing so presented a visible archive of the work done by curatorial and engagement teams and the LGBT Foundation partnered constituent group.

Past Tensions

Before we get ahead ourselves, let us discuss what it means to queer, and be, a gallery, and a “constituent” one at that. 

The four walls that constitute a gallery contain more than just art and objects – they are also vectors of ideas and values, predominately historic ones. Specifically, “it was the Victorians who decided that the visual arts were a force for good” (Frances Borzes 2014, p.20).  It was also the Victorians that accelerated the violent processes of colonial subjugation and extraction during the height of the British Empire. Such processes would be reflected in the art and institutions that held them. With the white, upper-class Victorian mindset being shaped by the endless pursuit of idealised civility, the idea of it would be shaped by what it was not. It was not people from the Global Majority, it was not people who did not practice Christianity, and it was not people who were queer.  Indeed, “omission from the museum does not simply mean marginalisation; it formally classifies certain lives, histories, and practices as insignificant’ [2010: 257] (Conlan, in Sullivan, Nikki and Middleton 2019).”

Art galleries and museums are “inherently political as every decision made is based on a specific point of view or framework, and they cannot claim to be neutral spaces given their origins in colonialism and imperialism” (Ng, Ware, & Greenberg p.148)

Queer as a word and a concept, is one that continues to have contentious afterlives. Sara Ahmed writes, that if “we return to the root of the word ‘‘queer’’ (from the Greek for cross, oblique, adverse) we can see that the word itself ‘‘twists,’’ with a twist that allows us to move between sexual and social registers, without flattening them or reducing them to a single line” (Ahmed 2006: 160).

My colleague Robin argues in her thesis that “technique of queering I borrow from Doty (1993) who argues that ‘queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant’ (43). Therefore the act of ‘queering’ a cultural space, such as a museum, means displaying what is against the overarching norms in society and facilitating those who aim to overturn these norms” (Cleary, -_-, p. )

Identity is increasingly being captured, consumed, and sold back to us by capitalist interests. When navigating a free cultural space, do you ever escape that tension? How do you balance the so-called “visitor experience” with authenticity in all of its sharp edges? 

What does this all mean in relation to queering a gallery? What can we mean by this? For some, simply having a queer member of staff in the space means it is queer. For others, it requires equal representation of queer art alongside cisgender and heterosexual artists. The word “queer” itself is one I find both alluring and interrogating. It is one that to me, unifies a marginalised community, yet also its usage challenges what is deemed to be “natural” or “safe”. Is queerness inherently unnatural? Is that the goal of queer liberation, to make us accepted in a hostile society, or to disturb and interrogate the norm? These questions and their answers become less defined as we think about them in a heritage context. As Amy Levin writes, “Queering the museum” means to “question every aspect of the institution” (2012: 159).

Carmen Maria Machado writing in her memoir, In the Dream House, reflects on the etymology of the word “archive” in the Prologue of the text. Recounting being fascinated by Jacques Derrida’s telling of the word deriving from the Greek term “arkheion”, that it refers to the “house of the ruler”, Machado reflection states that “the power, the authority, that is the most telling element. What is placed in our left out of the archive is a political act, dictated by the archivist and the political context in which she lives” (Machado, 2017, p. 2?).

I would say what is so rewarding about this exhibition is that it demonstrates that the queer community is not a monolith, we are always shifting and shaping our way to understanding one another. When I am stationed in the exhibition, it is always fascinating to read the discussions going on in the comment cards. One visitor wrote the exhibition was too “quiet”, that queer people are “loud”, whereas another wrote that merely having such an exhibition made them feel seen in how they live their life and express their desires. The continual additions to the glossary also further invites contesting ideas of queerness, never fully settling on what it means to be a queer person in the 21^st century. 

Prior to joining the Visitor Team in August 2022, I was part of the constituent group that met monthly to participate in workshops and discuss themes relating to the exhibition. Not only was it a privilege to be part of such a wonderful and intellectually rigorous group, but it also changed my perceptions on what a gallery can, and should be, like. 

My relationship with queer art, or more honestly art in general, prior to joining the constituent group was distant. Perhaps I would have appreciated the aesthetics of the artworks themselves, rather than consider too deeply the politics of gallery spaces and exhibition design.

Imagined Futures

My interest in absences and silences in heritage spaces led me to this project. In past academic ventures, I have followed in the tradition of critical theory that that which is not present is just as important as to what is already there. José Esteban Muñoz puts it best, in defining this difficulty – “ephemeral evidence is rarely obvious because it is needed to stand against the harsh lights of mainstream visibility and the potential tyranny of the fact” (Muñoz p. 63). The (Un)Defining Queer exhibition intrigued me with the promise of community collaboration with an institution to change their practices and displays.

The group was developed as a means of exploring acts of queering art and gallery spaces, with the opportunity to help shape what the exhibition will explore and discuss. With local queer artists and practitioners, each month we explored different elements of queer art and language. From learning about Polari to thinking about what makes language “queer”, we twisted and pulled different meanings from one another. The display sections you see around the exhibition were derived from the dominant themes that came from our discussions.

Prior to joining the Visitor Team in August 2022, I was part of the constituent group that met monthly to participate in workshops and discuss themes relating to the exhibition. Not only was it a privilege to be part of such a wonderful and intellectually rigorous group, but it also changed my perceptions on what a gallery can, and should be, like. 

My relationship with queer art prior to joining the constituent group was distant. 

Present Spaces

My relationship with this exhibition is one that has transformed significantly since joining the Whitworth as a Visitor Team Assistant in August 2022. Where once I would have visited this space as a visitor and collaborator, now I invigilate the space as part of my work day. There is an almost constant shapeshifting that takes place whenever I am in the space, do I have this intense protective feeling of the exhibition because of my personal relationship to it, or because it is my job to care so deeply? 

Then there is the question of navigating my own personal words being on the wall, a sense of vulnerability. Or is unease the right word? Do I want people to ask what I meant by my interpretation? Or, like any artist or writer, should I pretend that I don’t want to hear people’s opinions?

To see it come to life, little by little it changes. Rethinking how it can be done. 

Seeing where people linger, take the longest to see, are they looking? Or are they seeing?

Comment cards as their own archive – have always existed.

Moving, to see people’s faces light up at Chester Tenneson, or to be drawn in the starkly funny Gillian Wearing photograph. 

Comment cards are their own archive, seeing people’s own affirmations and exclamations make for a constantly changing conversation within the cards. 

People’s faces light up with excitement when saying they are hear for the UDQ exhibition, or almost breathing a sigh of relief that is still there, will be there until to the end of the year. 

Will it lead to permanent change? It should, and it must. This cannot be the end of it, as all activists know, the work never stops. In this dangerous political climate where our rights to exist freely and safely are continually being threatened, there must be continuous support and outreach for us from our cultural institutions.  

What is intriguing about this exhibition is how much is not on display, and what it privileges. The prominence of artworks by queer white cis people almost recycles the old narratives it seeks to disturb. Have we limited queerness to only be applied in a binarific Western context?

Knowing what’s missing is also important gaps and the absences are just as knowledgeable as what is present. In the exhibition, we have a zine library that holds multitudes of queer worlds and lives. There was a zine titled “How To Do Your T-Shot” on display for visitor reading. One day, I noticed it to be missing. I’d like to think that someone took it so they would learn how to administer their testosterone injections. I suppose that’s what an art museum is for at the end of the day – to help people learn, in whatever form that may take.  

Continuum

Is one temporary exhibition enough? One must consider the intersectionality of queerness, and its existence in space that was built at the height of Victorian ways of thinking and seeing the world. The imperial roots of gallery spaces, as well as their male-dominated hierarchies, are structural issues that cannot be solely dismantled by queered practices [temporary exhibition?]. 

What is encouraging from visitor comments and conversations is the desire for more. More works by Black queer artists, more works from lesbian artists, more works from working class artists, more, more, more.

Living as a queer person in 21^st century England, with increasing attacks on bodily autonomy and the right to live freely against our trans communities; the global rise of far-right politics; the crackdown on protest laws; the ongoing economic crisis; the continued denial of the extractive atrocities committed under the British Empire; the hostile legislation against migrant and asylum-seeking communities; the COVID-19 pandemic stalking us at every turn; the rapid destruction of our ecosystem; the increasing wealth inequality gap; the continued oppression of religious minorities; class exclusionary cultures and practices; the neo-liberalisation and casualisation of higher education;  the creeping reliance on Artificial Intelligence; the funding cuts to the arts and culture sector; an increasingly unaffordable housing market; stagnant wages; the over-arching doom of nuclear annihilation; our digital lives and afterlives being mangled by egotistical technocratic billionaires – all of this being beamed into our skulls in a 24/7 sadomasochistic doom spiral.

Living with this, trying to survive, with all of it, makes everything feel impossible.  

It’s almost like, before finding –, whatever this is, you feel like a lone wolf howling in anguish in permanent nuclear winter. Only, this time, a chorus of others howl back with twinned anguish, and hope, and anger. I don’t know what power feels like, but I can imagine it starts with a gathering of strangers.

I think I can sit with this anguish here, in this space, with others like me, just for a second. I could feel held, just for a second. I could feel seen, just for a second. I could feel heard, just for a second.

This is neither the end, nor was it a beginning. There have always been those doing the work to queer the art world, in their own meaningful ways. Queer art, artists, and heritage workers have always been here, and we will always be here. Once the art goes back into the collection, and we repaint and redo the space for the next exhibit, the afterlife of this exhibition will prosper in its longevity. The memories, communities, and actions that were formed with this exhibition will remain, and continue to change the Whitworth.  

Conclusion

Look! What don’t you see? What is present? Queering an art gallery is a process, one that stops and starts, turns and twists. There is no single definitive answer, nor should there be. The past year and a half.

Bibliography

• Ahmed, Sara (2006), Queer Phenomenology : Orientations, Objects, Others (London: Duke University Press).   
• Bilton, Dominic (2023), About – Queering the Whitworth. Available at:https://queeringthewhitworth.co.uk/home/ (Accessed: June 02 2023).
• Ng, Wendy, Ware, Syrus Marcus & Greenberg, Alyssa (2017), “Activating Diversity and Inclusion: A Blueprint for Museum Educators as Allies and Change Makers”, Journal of Museum Education 42:2, pp. 142 – 154.