​When you are working with an historic site, how do you interpret queer history when there is no evidence of queerness there? Maybe the records were lost or destroyed, or there’s nothing that you can find that points to a queer past; do you just give up and assume it was not meant to be?
 
This is a question I find myself asking repeatedly. When historic sites try to talk about their queer interpretation, it is always reliant on the history that is actually present. Maybe the lady of the house had an affair with another woman, or the son was a “confirmed bachelor”. Whatever the case, it is usually tied to something “verifiable”. The problem is that, these stories are rare. Not every site has the luxury of being able to uncover those histories, so what options are available for other sites?
 
My solution: composite histories.

I have been obsessed with dime museums lately. I am currently in the process of adapting my previous post on them, Dime Museums and the Exhibitionary Complex, into a full book chapter for an upcoming collection, and my mind has been racing with thoughts. Dime museums are fascinating institutions that lie at the intersections between the museum and the circus. This was the realm of the humbug, where any manner of lie would be told to an adoring public. Wax dummies next to fake taxidermy. At the very heart, where the glitz and glamour of show business crossed with the curatorial, was the freak show. It was from the dime museum’s stage where the cabinets of human curiosities could be seen.
 
It was popular. Really popular. It was through his dime museum that PT Barnum became a household name. They would peak in popularity between the 1880s and 1890s, suffering a slow decline until their fateful death in the interwar period. But their memory lingers, even to today. My previous post looked to apply museum theory in the form of Tony Bennett to discuss dime museums, and in researching the book chapter, I found myself thinking on another facet of museum studies; Jennifer Tyburczy’s Sex Museums and her declaration that all museums are sex museums.