Wow.  New Zealand is one happening place.  I'm impressed that you all are
working on lesbian and gay issues in museum policy and content.  Here are
some helpful pieces of information.  The AAM's Alliance for Lesbian and Gay
Concerns, of which I am the co-chair, has been investigating the same issues
and is working to compile queer info from as many museums as possible.  I'd
love it if other responses are posted to add to museum-l or to offlist to me
as well as the folks in New Zealand.
The Oakland Museum recently had a show on wedding practices which included
lesbian and gay commitment ceremonies.

The NY Public Library had its big exhibition on lesbian and gay history in
the US in the summer of 1994.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History had a little case show
on lesbian and gay history.

A large number of community organizations, queer and straight, have
sponsored or mounted shows on queers and queer culture.  I'm thinking
particularly of shows on Audre Lorde, Harvey Milk, African American lesbians
(by the Lesbian Herstory Archives) and a panel show that the Int'l. Lesbian
and Gay Association put on.

Some museums in the US have lesbians and gay included in anti-discrimination
policies, but they tend to be museums that are within larger institutions
that set the policies, like the Fogg at Harvard.

Tamara Real of Real Communications, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has done a
marketing study on lesbians and gay men.  It was not done for museums but
she presented the information within a museum context at the 1994 AAM meeting.

Anecdotally, my experience of creating programming with lesbian and gay
content has been that it pays off big time.  Queer films, from experimental
to documentary to feature, bring in lesbians and gay men in numbers that I
haven't seen during regular museum hours.  Institutional support of lesbian
and gay films and other programs also builds goodwill in the queer community
that really does *seem* to make lesbians and gay men want to come back.  No
hard facts on that one, however.

Does anyone know other interesting stuff?

Farar Elliott
Director of Public Programs
The Valentine Museum
1015 E. Clay St.
Richmond, VA  23219
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