ABSTRACT
Traditionally, museums have been slow to respond to LGBTQIA+ representation in their collections. Developing museum displays and locating relevant material can be difficult, particularly in smaller, rural museums. Today, most museums in the world still do not include permanent LGBTQIA+ representation. Many ‘search our collections’ portals leave researchers with little to work with. An added difficulty is that, once inside a museum, researchers can struggle to find content because LGBTQIA+ items are not tagged. This chapter discusses issues related to researching in museums. During the last ten years or so, more and more museums are planning and hosting temporary exhibitions and displays to coincide with celebratory days and months. These pop-up exhibitions have benefits and drawbacks, which are discussed in the chapter. Queer tours – volunteer-led introductions to certain items in museums that have queer links – have grown in popularity over the last few years. These are evaluated. Houses can also be ‘queered’, and the chapter considers some locations which have been ‘queered’ due to their associations with certain individuals. Finally, the chapter considers dedicated collections of LGBTQIA+ artefacts and looks at the arguments for dedicated LGBTQIA+ museums.
