Museums, Moralities and Human Rights

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.

Prologue1 Progress and Protest2‘I am he that aches with love’3 Coming Out Stories4 Taking sides5 Museums and the Transgender Tipping Point6 Museum Work as Human Rights Work

Richard Sandell is Professor of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. His research and practice focuses on museums, equality and social justice. He is Series Editor, with Christina Kreps, of Museum Meanings. His books include Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference (2007), Re-Presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in the Museum (with Jocelyn Dodd and Rosemarie Garland Thomson) (2010); and Museums, Equality and Social Justice (with Eithne Nightingale) (2012).