Seeing Things Queerly: Moving Queerness from the Outside to the Inside of the Science Museum

Technecast

In the first of two guest episodes, curated by the Outside/rs 2022 conference, we’re exploring the unseen, emotional and sometimes smelly aspects of museum collection work. In recent years, an increasing number of institutions in the heritage sector have begun to recognise their significant role in including queer history and in battling the LGBTQ+ community’s invisibility. Historically, queer perspectives have been excluded from museum collecting and object interpretation. Acquired objects that are not explicitly connected to LGBTQ+ life have generally been read as ‘straight’, disregarding any queer significance they might hold. A single object, however, has the potential to tell a range of different stories. Every time an object is interpreted, an active choice is made about which one to tell. At the Science Museum, historic cataloguing practices have led to difficulties in finding queer stories – but this does not mean that they are not there. Unearthing them is a necessity for the museum’s mission to inspire futures and to engage audiences in STEM.*Contributors: Laura Büllesbach (she/her) and Dr. Rebecca Mellor (she/her) are Assistant Curators for the Science Museum Group’s One Collection project. Follow their work on Twitter @laurabullesbach and @rjimellor.Science Museum Group Collections Online: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/*Outside/rs 2022: https://outsiders2022.wordpress.com/[e-mail]@outsiders2022*The Technecast:technecast.wixsite.com/listen - [e-mail] - @technecastThe Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP.Episode presented and edited by Joe Jukes. @jsdjukes Cover Image: Object no. 1997-181/5 "Bag of blue 2 x 4 Lego bricks", The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum.Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com