Last week, Out History released a previously unpublished study by curator Jonathan David Katz and Weena Perry documenting the suppression of LGBT themes in exhibits, online education, and printed catalogs at New York's leading museums. Of the seven institutions, the Guggenheim ranked the highest with a nonetheless low score of 12% inclusiveness and the worst, with a total of 0%, was the New York Historical Society. The Met earned an abysmal 1.8%. Such willful exclusion of queer scholarship and information is deeply damaging; the report argues
"The failure of museums to engage in a wide swathe of art historical scholarship is of grave concern because it raises the question of historical accuracy. Failing to educate the public about the LGBT subject matter or significance of the work, or of the work’s producer, does a profound disservice to the work as a cultural document, to the LGBT community which has produced a number of greatly respected and admired artists, and to the society as a whole."
Beyond the macro view, the details of the museums' pettiness are painful to read: "As recently as 2005, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was asked if they would simply list a symposium on Rauschenberg and sexuality among their publicity materials for their Rauschenberg Combines exhibit. They refused, as they refused to include sexuality in any way in the exhibition itself."
The full report covers the years from 1995 to its completion in August 2007 but was never been published.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Smithsonian is hosting a two-day free public forum called Flashpoints and Fault Lines: Museum Curation and Controversy, which will be broadcast live on the web starting at 6:00pm. Katz and Charles Francis are two of the speakers on the panel Representing Sensitive Topics: Gender and Sexuality, scheduled to begin at 7:15pm. They will dazzle, of course, but otherwise the majority of participants are so uniformly establishment -- handpicked by the Smithsonian -- the event might be renamed Curation and Conformity. Notice on Wednesday's panel titled Curation, the questions include "To what extent do public figures have a say in how they are presented? How do we listen to cultural communities and account for their sensibilities and sensitivities?" When the "cultural community" complaining was the Catholic League, the museum immediately removed the Wojnarowicz piece from Hide/Seek. When it's criticism from the LGBT community, the results are documented in the report above.
Impressive blog! -Arron
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