Why is it so Difficult? - A Study of How Cultural History Museums Work to Include the Cultural Heritage of the LGBT Community in Their Collections

The aim of this two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum Studies is to analyse how Swedish cultural history museums work to include LGBTQ-heritage (LGBT is the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer) in their collections. This work is articulated around three research questions. These interrogate museum practice about collecting and collection management, what it looks like in the already gathered collections as well as the implications such work implies on a broader level. The theoretical framework throughout the paper is gender and LGBT studies as well as queer theory. The analytical tools that have been used are bias-theory (Carruthers 1987), stereotyping (Pickering 2003) and classification theory (Bowker & Leigh Star 2000). Seven interviews form the main empirical material that is analysed in order to grasp museums collecting practice and collection management. Today’s museums practice is influenced by the new trends in democratic representation and seeks therefore to include new narratives that include the LGBTQ community. Museums are either collecting new material with connection to the LGBTQ community or look inwards in order to reinterpret older collections and maybe find a link to it. Both strategies rouse questions that are discussed in this paper. How to classify and document that material as well as selection processes and the traditional museums relation to the alternative collecting practice as the grassroots organizations stand for are discussed in the thesis