Spotlight

The Museum of Transology, currently on view at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, began by gathering everyday objects and stories from Brighton’s trans community and is now the world’s largest collection of material culture surrounding trans, non-binary and intersex lives. Each object has a handwritten tag attached to it that explains its significance to the donor. Heartfelt, intimate and emotive, they explore themes of ambition, desire and confidence, as well as social expectations of gender conformity. Brought together, these individual responses provide a revelatory account of the significant evolution of gender politics in the UK over the last fifteen years. According to one visitor (2017), the Museum of Transology is “…an important subject that affects us all, however we feel about our gender. This kind of display is exactly what museums should be doing.” The Museum of Transology is a timely exhibition and has evoked an overwhelmingly positive response from visitors, the media, health providers, education institutions and the UKs LGBTIQ+ communities. Notably, it has engaged large numbers of new, ‘hard-to-reach’ visitors who have repeatedly communicated their desire to explore modern gender debates. This presentation will explore the curatorial methodology of building a display with the ambition of de-spectacularising the portrayal of one of the most marginalised groups in the UK, whilst systematically combatting their erasure from history.