The Earth is My Altar: A Black Trans Museology

In contending with slavery’s ubiquitous shadow over civil society and museum spaces, I revel in Blackness and transness’ ability to become a portal, or a disruption in the white supremacist, heteropatriarchal nature of the museum. As two social conditions defined by constructions that privilege whiteness and hetero and cis-normativity, Blackness and transness have resisted the fixity that positions them as singularly subjugated. This work posits that Black transness is an evocation of malleability, it is a doorway, gateway, and a series of linkages that propels possibility and resistance for Black trans people. Examining two instances in the history of museums in the United States, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and Black Trans Liberation: Memoriam and Deliverance on view at the Modern Museum of Art PS1 in 2021, this thesis aims to illustrate museums’ status as perpetrators of social death, position Blackness and transness as disruptors of time and coloniality as represented in museum spaces, and ultimately, identify practices of remembrance that support Black trans flourishing.