Amy K. Levin

By: Amy K. Levin
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Gender & Intersectionality Studies, Health and Social Care, History, Museum and Heritage Studies , Other

In their chapter on collecting materials related to HIV-AIDS in Dutch museums, Manon Parry and Hugo Schalkwijk, who designed this activity, describe several challenges in both collecting and exhibiting the history of HIV and AIDS.

-Browse the collections of major institutions or look up specific exhibitions, searching for HIV and AIDS-related objects. See, for example, the catalogues for the Wellcome Collection (https://wellcomecollection.org/works) or the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (https://americanhistory.si.edu/), or search for images and articles about the traveling exhibition “Siyazama: Traditional Arts, Education, and AIDS in South Africa.”  

-Which perspectives are best represented in these collections? What else could, or should be included? Why?

-Give some other examples of collecting and exhibiting the history of HIV and AIDS, based on a collection or archive in your country or region.

-Browse newspaper reports and Twitter threads about COVID-19, search for online exhibitions on other pandemics, or use other creative ways to find potential objects to document this pandemic. What kinds of things would you want to collect? How would you find these artifacts? Which stories from this unfolding history are most at risk of being lost or underrepresented in museums, in your opinion? Why?

-Choose one object related to AIDS, and one related to COVID-19, and write an 1500-word analysis of each one, explaining what they are, where from, what they represent, what stories you would tell by exhibiting them. What else would you show alongside each and why?

Find out more by reading their chapter in Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism (link below).

By: Amy K. Levin
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, History, Museum and Heritage Studies , Other

In a recent email, Brenda Malone of the National Museum of Ireland commented: "I've been wondering about the many things that makes coronavirus collecting both similar and so different to collecting the Irish abortion referendum. There are plenty of official government signs to collect, which I'm sure I'll get a hold of, though I have to find that appropriate window between them not being needed anymore and being thrown out, which can't be arranged in advance. Also a lot of concepts to represent - the trauma this is causing to some, how terrified every shop assistant I've spoken to is.

And the memes created to deal with it all! How do we collect a complex event that produces material that includes both officialdom and personal experience, both trauma and humour?"

Think about practical and ethical considerations around collecting items that represent such a trauma. Go back to the first half of this activity and reconsider one of the objects you selected. Write a brief paragraph in support of collecting it now and then a second brief paragraph in which you oppose collecting the item. In a third paragraph, discuss how you might ethically collect and display something to represent trauma experienced by those who work in retail, healthcare, or other emergency services.

By: Amy K. Levin
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Gender & Intersectionality Studies, History, Museum and Heritage Studies , Other

In her chapter of Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism, Branda Malone of the National Museum of Ireland describes a proactive effort on the museum’s part to collect materials related to the “Repeal the 8^th” campaign to legalize abortion even as the campaign was taking place (see https://www.museum.ie/Corporate-Media/News/June-2018/Collecting-material-culture-from-the-8th-Amendment). We invite readers to consider a pressing current event – for us, it’s the coronavirus pandemic – and to make a small collection of digital or physical materials (say, five items). Consider the obvious, such as sanitizer bottles or empty toilet paper rolls, but also more individual items, for instance, a child’s home schooling lesson, a sign explaining a shop’s closing, or an unemployment notice. For each item, write a paragraph on what it is, who it belonged to, and how it was used if it’s not immediately apparent. Write another paragraph explaining why you believe it’s an important object to keep.

By: Amy K. Levin
Subjects: Museum and Heritage Studies , Other

This activity is from Joshua Adair, co-editor of Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism.

By: Amy K. Levin
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Gender & Intersectionality Studies, Museum and Heritage Studies , Other

In their chapter on the queer working group at the Victoria & Albert Museum in the UK, Zorian Clayton and Dawn Hoskin describe an effort to make works by LGBT artists more visible by adding 29 searchable terms to the institution’s collection database. You can try this out by going to https://collections.vam.ac.uk/ and entering keywords related to gender and sexuality. The full list of terms is available at https://www.vam.ac.uk/lgbtq. Examples might include androgyny, cross-dressing, and lesbian. Now, go to the collections search page for a major museum in your country (your instructor may provide ideas) and try the experiment using the same words. What do you find? Were you surprised or not? Finally, find a local institution with a searchable collection and repeat the experiment. Write a short essay reporting the results of your searches. In the conclusion, you might consider the following questions: Why do you think certain institutions have more inclusive websites than others? Should all institutions include terms related to identity categories, such as race and gender? Do these terms make works more accessible and visible? Why or why not? What other ways can museums make themselves more inclusive?

By: Amy K. Levin
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Gender & Intersectionality Studies, History, Literature, Museum and Heritage Studies , Other

Another exciting lesson plan based on Joshua Adair's chapter of Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism, which focuses on Carnton Plantation and romance novels that perpetuate racist ideas of the Old South. See https://authors.taylorandfrancis.com/news/6038.

By: Amy K. Levin
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Gender & Intersectionality Studies, Museum and Heritage Studies , Other

For those who are struggling to put Museum Studies classes on line, here's an activity based my introduction to Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism. This activity engages students in considering gender diversity in museums.

Visit the museum's fascinating virtual museum tour of highlights of the 2017 Queer British Art exhibit: https://www.tate.org.uk/…/ta…/queer-walk-through-british-art. After the tour, share your thoughts about how the different interpreters of images on the website define queerness and gender. Then consider what constitutes evidence for them. Why do we expect people to cite evidence of the existence of queer lives and relationships but not of cisgender lives and heterosexual relationships?

As a second step, direct students to the Amazon page for Clare Barlow's catalog for the exhibit, also titled Queer British Art. Look at the pages that are available free. How do the authors describe the artists' lives and work? Is their language assertive or tentative? Do the writers use the active or passive voice? Here, the last paragraph of the essay on William Blake Richmond and the first half of the essay on Blackness in Bloomsbury are particularly useful. Why would the authors make these linguistic choices? What do their choices reveal about attitudes toward homosexuality?

Finally, students can read my opinions in the Amazon preview to Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism, pages 10-12.