ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the main questions of the book: what is a queer museum and what does queer museum practice look like? To address these questions, it introduces four case study institutions in Western Europe and gives context for why these were chosen. It explains the importance of using queer theory to critically analyse these case studies and why it is an essential framework to understand the queer museum. The idea of a ‘queer museology’ is introduced (and later expanded upon in Chapter 2), as well as ideas in queer theory like queer futurity and failure are discussed. Queer research, what it means to be a queer researcher and the importance of reflexivity are also discussed. Finally, an overview of the book’s proceeding chapters explains the four case studies and the overarching idea of the queer utopic museum.
