For archivists across the country, exhibits have long served as a tool for bringing collection materials out of the stacks and into conversation with the public. This session brings together insights from the efforts of the Faulkner Morgan Archive (FMA) and the University of Louisville Archives & Special Collections (ASC) to build spaces for queer historical literacy and possibility. The speakers will share their experiences from a range of community and student-guided displays staged in 2024, designed to center the stories, agency, and organizing tools of LGBTQ+ Kentuckians past, present, and future.
Josh Porter will present on three exhibitions from the FMA, an independent nonprofit devoted to sharing Kentucky’s LGBTQ history. Each exhibition will showcase a different method of curatorial possibilities, but all require an emphasis on collaboration. Cassidy Meurer will examine her efforts at ASC guiding students through the process of curating an exhibition of somewhat unprocessed traces of public and domestic queer life. The materials she will highlight come from the Williams-Nichols collection, one of the largest community-stewarded sets of LGBTQ+ materials at an American university. Chad Kamen will discuss a partnership between ASC and local activist organization the Fairness Campaign. The collaboration developed a display and programming about tools and practices for mobilizing intersectional organizing from the campaign's records.
You will learn more about emerging approaches to staging and describing queer materials for various audiences, as well as frameworks for highlighting queer joy and liberation amid increasing institutional repression of power-informed language.
