Looking for Queer Possibility in Museums: An Interview with Margaret Middleton
Museums, Queerness, and the Politics of “Not Enough Evidence”
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I grew up never seeing queerness discussed in museums or historical spaces. Whether it was a house tour that didn’t want to even entertain the alleged queerness of one of its occupants, or an art museum that didn’t discuss any possible queer readings of artworks, queerness was very rarely on the menu. I remember touring Emily Dickinson’s house, for example, and the tour guide wouldn't comment on her sexuality because “we don’t have definitive proof.” While that’s not strictly true, it’s a common refrain for folks who’d rather limit our understanding of what was possible in the past by insisting on incredibly high burdens of proof. To be clear, this is not about insisting on the queerness of people in history, but of approaching the past with a genuine openness to ask questions and tell stories from a place of possibility.
In recent years, I’ve been elated to see museum professionals call for more attention to queerness in museum practice. In museums and pop culture I’ve been happy to see some great developments, including a recent doc on whether Lincoln was queer; Hugh Ryan’s excellent Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, and public historians using social media to offer history and interpretation still lacking in museums.
The Trump administration has moved to erase or limit our rights, erase federal spaces named for queer people or funded to preserve and celebrate our history. Now more than ever, we must insist not just on queer joy, but on queer possibility. Someone who has really helped me develop my own thinking on this is Margaret Middleton, an exhibit designer and museum consultant. In their work, they’ve called for a reappraisal for hwo we approach this topic, specifically, asking that we operate from a place of possibility. If you’re new to Margaret’s work, I’d recommend their article on queer possibility and accompanying Looking for Queer Possibility in the Museum zine. (Check both out immediately!)
I’m so delighted to share this interview with Margaret Middletown about their work.
Name: Margaret Middleton
Profession: independent exhibit designer and museum consultant
Can you tell us about what led you to work in design, and specifically to work with museums?
I was drawn to industrial design because of the way it blends two interests of mine: art and engineering. During my studies at the Rhode Island School of Design I held a work/study position at the Providence Children's Museum and gave tours at the RISD Art Museum. I went on to spend the first half of my career in children’s museums where I gained a deep appreciation for the power of play and informal learning. Now as a freelancer I work for museums of all kinds. The variety and possibility of museums appeals to my nerdy, generalist nature.
In 2020, you introduced the concept of “queer possibility” in an article appearing in the Journal of Museum Education. Can you explain the concept you explored there?
What inspired you to write this article and develop this concept?
Queer Possibility is inspired by my experience as a queer museum-goer visiting museums and noticing a conspicuous absence of queer history. I see artworks and stories with clear connections to queerness that are not interpreted as such and I notice euphemistic language that hints at queerness but doesn't name it. When I would ask my colleagues why they didn't interpret queer pasts, I quickly noticed trends in their responses - they told me that contemporary queer language was anachronistic, they cited a lack of evidence, and they did not think it was relevant to their interpretation. The more I asked, the clearer the pattern. I could have made a bingo card. I decided to use my article to address each of these issues and offer strategies for queer-positive interpretation.
In 2022, you debuted the Looking for Queer Possibility in the Museum zine. Who did you design this for? How has it been used in the years since it appeared?
As someone with privilege and access, my best chance for affecting change in the museum world is writing for an audience of fellow museum professionals. With my zine Looking for Queer Possibility in the Museum I wanted to take the opportunity to speak to museum visitors. The zine invites visitors to put on their “lavender lenses” and let their own queer sensibilities guide their museum visit. The zine actually calls out current museum practice as harmful and states that it is unfair for museums to ask visitors to do their own queer interpretation, so I was a little shocked when museum educators began using it in the museum with visitors. If you work in a museum, you have access to the power to change harmful museum practice. I never intended this zine to be a replacement for museum work. That said, there has been a strong positive response to the zine from my colleagues and I am really glad that it has inspired some museum professionals to trust in their own queer sensibilities as they work to interpret queer content in their museums.
How do you see the museum as a site for discussions of queer history?
The museum should be a place to learn about all kinds of history. Though more and more exhibitions are including queer narratives, most queer content in museums is still relegated to programs, which are time-specific, ephemeral, have limited engagement, and are sometimes ticketed and age-restricted. There is still a lot of hesitance around offering permanent queer interpretation in the museum that any visitor can access. It’s true, queer interpretation does mean making a stand - bigots might complain or queer people might critique their choices.
Museum professionals will often tell me they do not feel confident interpreting queer history because they are not queer themselves. What an excellent opportunity to read about queer history and hire queer museum professionals to collaborate with! And while I appreciate the trend toward community curation to fill gaps in museum knowledge, there are clear patterns in what subject matter gets this treatment. I’ve never seen a community-curated exhibit about French Impressionism, for example. Almost all of the community-curated exhibits I’ve seen are about the histories of marginalized communities. And frequently community curation relies on the volunteer hours of members of those marginalized communities, almost guaranteeing that no traditional content experts will be participating because they would have required remuneration. As a result, most of the co-curated queer exhibits I have seen focus on young people who are absolutely experts on their own lives and do have brilliant ideas, but I worry that our field’s over-reliance on young queer volunteers is convenient.
I suspect that for some museums, the power dynamics are purposeful, that perhaps we are interested in working with people with less social capital because they are less able to challenge our cisheteronormative institutions. All this said, I am absolutely heartened that more and more museums are interpreting queer narratives in exhibitions. More and more writing is coming out about queer interpretation and museum professionals are getting braver. I see exciting new examples of this all the time.
To learn more about Margaret’s work, visit their site.
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