ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how curatorial practices in public art museums, private collections, as well as community-based initiatives in Vienna contribute to establishing and counteracting hegemonic ideologies of sexual norms. The curated presentation of art, its visual and spatial display and the explanatory apparatus attached to it through texts and gallery education, mediates sexual norms. Cultural ideologies of desire are institutionally produced. Contrasting different examples, including public museums and queer feminist initiatives, the chapter shows that challenging heteronormalized sexual politics is central to curating as queer feminist organizing. The Essl Collection exhibition (2020–2021) at Albertina Modern, one of Austria's publicly funded federal museums in Vienna, shows how the public image of heterosexual norms is constructed by means of art curation. Queer feminist initiatives in Vienna, such as the Queer Museum Vienna, develop counterstrategies of curating otherwise. Such activist initiatives are involved in the hopefully long-term transformation of curatorial practices, gallery education and guided tours, including those in public museums.
