Here and Queer in Toronto

This paper imagines a museum of Toronto’s queer history, focused on local artists, social movements, and political activism. This museum seeks to reimagine how queer individuals are treated within the museum world by imagining an exhibit space where queer ways of being are normalized and respected. In reviewing a history of queer exhibits and queer studies, I conceptualize a queer use of space, where disorientation and strangeness serve to normalize everyday queer joy. I highlight where past galleries have succeeded and failed in exhibiting queer lives, and the complications of identifying with historical figures who predate contemporary labels such as “gay” or “transgender.”