As part of my research project, I conducted an online interview with curator E-J Scott who founded the Museum of Transology to document and care for the lived experiences and mementos of transgender people living in the UK today. My research is focused on the concept of queering museums and how this can be done in a sustainable way that best serves the queer community and empowers them to decide how they want to be represented. The wider potential of queering is another key aspect of my research which came up in my interview with E-J when we discussed how queering could be rolled out as good practice for community engagement and ‘shouldn’t be seen to lie within LGBTIQ+ politics’.[1]
The Museum of Transology received the Activist Museum award for 2020-21 and is the UK’s most significant collection of objects relating to trans, non-binary and intersex people. E-J has argued that community collecting is a proactive form of activism, which he terms ‘collectivism’.[2] This is at the heart of the Museum of Transology where each object has a hand-written message explaining its importance to the owner, providing an opportunity for the community to ‘write ourselves back into history, on our own terms, in our own words’.[3]
Scott launched the community collecting project in 2014 but in his 2019 talk ‘The Museum of Transology: Putting Gender on the Museum Agenda’ he stated that even in the cultural moment and anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain ‘still there was scant evidence that museums were collecting the material culture of today’s gender diversity or had the in-house expertise to do so.’[4]
It was wonderful to get to interview E-J given his impressive advocacy, his community work and his insightful, constructive criticism of the museum and heritage sector. Leaving a queer imprint on museums is what E-J's work is trying to achieve and his analysis brings into sharp focus whether we are queering the museum or museum-ing what’s queer.[5] In our interview we discussed the meaning and potential of queering as a process that is about making LGBTQIA+ histories more visible but can also be used to ‘fundamentally question what good practice is’ and re-think how museums engage and co-curate with specific communities.[6]
The Museum of Transology was designed to be open-source and replicable and the collecting methodology is now being adopted with similar institutions being created, such as the Museum of Everything. E-J expressed his hope during our interview that eventually there could be Museums of Transology across the world which could provide a ‘safe exploration of our different community experiences via the mechanism of collections’.[7]
E-J also emphasised the need for museums to proactively go out to communities and build trust so that they will want to donate objects and participate in any future projects. The work of inclusion and representation is not something that will happen in an equal or truly collaborative way unless museums commit to new forms of engagement and co-curation. Whilst acknowledging that this has dramatically improved in recent years there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.
It is my hope that professionals such as E-J and pioneering institutions like the Museum of Transology will become a blueprint for conscientious and empathetic representation. Real authoritative power needs to be given to communities so that they can be represented on their terms in order to better tackle misinformed rhetoric and encourage a sense of belonging within museums for hitherto marginalised communities.
Written by Molly Hale
[1] E-J Scott, interview by Molly Hale, Zoom, online interview, 25/05/21. [2] E-J Scott, ‘The Museum of Transology: Putting Gender on the Museum Agenda’, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 14 May 2019 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O5M66vFkXo > [Accessed 24/06/21]. [3] The Museum of Transology, < https://www.museumoftransology.com/about > [Accessed 24/06/21]. [4] E-J Scott, ‘The Museum of Transology: Putting Gender on the Museum Agenda’, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 14 May 2019 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O5M66vFkXo > [Accessed 24/06/21]. [5] Laura C. Foster ‘Queer Lives: Public History and the Queer Archive’, History Workshop (18 February 2021) < https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/queer-lives-public-history-and-the-queer-archive/ > [Accessed 28/04/21]. [6] E-J Scott, interview by Molly Hale, Zoom, online interview, 25/05/21. [7] Ibid.