This book explores how museums, galleries and heritage sites of all kinds, through the narratives they construct and publicly present, can shape the moral and political climate within which human rights are experienced. Through a series of richly-drawn cases, which focus on gender diversity and same-sex love and desire, Richard Sandell examines the ways in which museums are implicated in the ongoing struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex human rights. Museums, Moralities and Human Rights brings together for the first time the perspectives not only of those who work in, govern, fund and visit museums but also those of rights activists and campaigners who, at key moments in their struggle, have turned their attention to museums to advance their cause. Offering new insights into how human rights are continually fought for, realised and refused, this volume makes the case for museums of all kinds to take up an active, mindful and purposive engagement with contemporary human rights concerns.
Table of contents
List of illustrations ix -- Preface xi -- Acknowledgements xvii -- Prologue xix -- 1 Progress and protest 1 -- 2 'I am he that aches with love' 27 -- 3 Coming out stories 57 -- 4 Taking sides 87 -- 5 Museums and the transgender tipping point 111 -- 6 Museum work as human rights work 135 -- Appendix 163 -- References 165 -- Index 176
