Join us for a presentation by Craig Middleton, Senior Curator at the National Museum of Australia and Honorary Lecturer at the Australian National University.
Queering the Museum
It is widely acknowledged that LGBTIQ+ lives have been historically excluded from museums. Rather than being intentional, this exclusion is most often an effect of long held and largely unexamined structures and practices. The most common response to exclusion has been to promote social inclusion as an ideal and a practice. The manifestation of this in museums often involves the adding of LGBTIQ+ stories to collections – stories that often centre progressive narratives resulting in the acquiring of rights. Such stories are undoubtedly important but tend to reproduce heteronormative logic. In responding, this talk articulates a ‘queering’ of museums and museum practices.
Craig Middleton (he/him) is a Senior Curator at the National Museum of Australia and an Honorary Lecturer at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. At the National Museum of Australia, he is responsible for creative, content, and collections development across a range of projects and programs within the Discovery and Collections division. He is a widely published author and his book, co-authored with Dr Nikki Sullivan, Queering the Museum was published by Routledge in 2019. His commitment to LGBTIQ+ representation has informed his work in museums, including through the creation of tours, programs, exhibitions, and research.