In November/December 2024, I had a rare opportunity to travel to Australia to give the keynote address at the LGBTQ Migration Symposium. This event was held in Adelaide, South Australia, on November 22, as part of a month-long, city-wide LGBTQ+ Pride festival. The symposium itself celebrated the launch of a permanent virtual exhibit at the Migration Museum titled On the Move: Adelaide and LGBTQ Migration. The exhibit explores the city’s role as a haven for queer Australians beginning in the 1950s. The symposium I participated in featured researchers, curators, and community members reflecting on the research that went into the exhibit; the event also recognized the LGBTQ+ informants whose stories form the bulk of the exhibit’s content. My speech connected this effort to the larger, international field of LGBTQ+ museum interpretation and reflected on my own experiences as a queer migrant within the United States.
On the Move relies heavily on oral history and is the culmination of a multiyear collaboration between the University of Adelaide, RMIT University, and the History Trust of South Australia (the parent organization of the Migration Museum) with funding from the Australian Research Council Linkage Program. In addition to creating a new collection of oral histories, producing this virtual museum exhibit, and convening the symposium I attended, the project also resulted a book, Queer Memory and Storytelling: Gender and Sexually-Diverse Identities and Trans-Media Narrative, by the project’s principal investigators Rob Cover and Rosslyn Prosser.
After the symposium, my official duties in Australia were complete, and my spouse Danni and I were able to take a few weeks to explore the states of South Australia and Victoria, where Melbourne is located. Of course, both being arts-and-culture professionals who are passionate about what we do, our holidays always involve a fair bit of museum-going, attending cultural events, meeting new colleagues, and seeking out innovative ideas for our work. In Australia, this meant a visit to the d’Arenburg Cube, meeting with the staff at the Australian Queer Archives, and taking in the Melbourne Theatre Company‘s amazing musical production of My Brilliant Career, adapted from the classic Australian novel by Miles Franklin (pen name for Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin). We also took a four-day ecotour of the River Murray, operated by Murray River Trails. This tour was one of the highlights of the trip, and in addition to just being a wonderful few days, it gave me lots of ideas for making public education fun and memorable.
Now, I am back in the United States, refreshed from my time away and eager to incorporate these new colleagues and new experiences into my work moving forward.