Diversities of choice,choice of diversities: Practical aspects of a diversity-centered exhibit

Abstract

A cultural institution choosing to mount an exhibit centered on the theme of diversity (or at least to ensure that a reasonable variety of types of objects/creators is presented) faces an inherent contradiction. Namely, while the human experience is infinite, exhibit space is not. Trying to contain the naturally uncontainable obliges an exhibit curator to make choices of materials, manners of display, and item descriptions, which provide a sense of the subject, knowing that inevitably some people and groups will be excluded. Such was our experience at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives with the creation of our 2019 exhibit The Stars Are Ours: Infinite Diversities in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The exhibit is based around the social, ethnic, racial, gender and other diversities of science fiction and fantasy (SF&F) – diversities in creators, in themes, in characters and in plots. Curatorial decisions respected the overarching exhibit theme while also recognizing the physical reality of the space and ensuring an optimal educational experience for patrons. The exhibit is organized thematically rather than by a specific ‘type’ of diversity, because the idea of boxing groups into specifically delineated, ghettoized areas of the exhibit was counterintuitive to the idea of diversity. Most of the exhibit themes were chosen for their broad nature, which allow for a wider range of authors and works to represent them. Items were chosen that we felt could best reflect the diverse nature of the SF&F genres and demonstrate their commonality as documents of the human cultural experience. Exhibit display is also a process involving many factors. In creating exhibit descriptive material, we sought to make subtle rather than overt connections to the overall exhibit theme where possible. The exhibit, in short, is intended as a diversity ‘sampler’ rather than any sort of attempt to try to capture the breadth of the subject. No exhibit with ‘diversity’ as a theme – whether overtly stated or implied – can realistically do more than acknowledge its inability to be a full chronicle. In doing so, exhibit curators actually recognize, in fact, the deep and limitless richness of their chosen subjects.

Keywords

diversity exhibits library exhibitions popular culture science fiction

Diversity, in essence, is variety. It is the foundation of all things in nature, where no two life forms are precisely alike. Humanity, likewise, as a part of nature, is marked by forms various and diverse in all their aspects – race, gender, sexual orientation, physicality, cultural backgrounds and traditions, and so forth. As a concept, it is deceptively simple and its societal advantages are obvious. However, diversity is also by definition difficult to quantify. It is difficult to place ‘diversity’ into discrete boxes that illuminate various aspects of it without violating the spirit of celebrating difference, and without, in a sense, ghettoizing diverse groups into separate corners.

This is not to suggest that cultural institutions should avoid exhibits or programs that educate about the various diversities of the human experience. The opposite is true. However, when planning such exhibits, institutions should be aware that they face an inherent contradiction. Namely, while humanity is infinite, exhibit space is not. Trying to contain the naturally uncontainable obliges an exhibit curator to make choices of materials, manners of display and item descriptions, which provide a sense of the subject, knowing that inevitably some people and groups will be excluded. Such was our experience at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives with the creation and installation of our 2019 exhibit The Stars Are Ours: Infinite Diversities in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Figure 1 shows the catalog made for the exhibit).

Figure 1.

Catalog cover, The Stars Are Ours: Infinite Diversities in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University.

A formal institutional understanding of diversity at our library has never been denoted. Nor have we formally defined it as a component of a visual expression of the concept (aka in an exhibit). That is a difficult undertaking due to the inherent fluidity of ‘diversity’: as Hearn and Louvrier (2015) note, the term is fuzzy, lacking any kind of binary opposition to help define it and which has meaning only in a particular context. However, our approach could be defined, following Hearn and Louvrier, as inherently constructionist in design. As they put it, ‘from this…perspective, an individual does not have a unified identity; instead, each individual has plural and fragmented identities, and may change identity from one situation to another’ (Hearn and Louvrier, 2015). In the same way, we worked in the exhibit, as noted below, to ensure that each creator was not confined to a single identity that would fail to reflect the entire, complex nature of a person. Identities are distributed across themes rather than specific characteristics.

Our curatorial decisions respected the overarching exhibit theme while also recognizing the physical reality of the space and ensuring an optimal educational and visual experience for patrons. The exhibit is organized thematically rather than by a specific ‘type’ of diversity (i.e. ‘Women Authors’, ‘LGBT Authors’), because the idea of boxing groups into specifically delineated areas of the exhibit is counterintuitive to the idea of diversity. Most of the exhibit themes were chosen for their broad nature, which allow for a wider range of authors and works to represent them. Materials were selected through a decision process that took numerous factors into account – literary significance, authorial fame, the item’s nature as representational of its kind, authorial connection to our institution, aesthetic appeal of the item, to name a few. Items were chosen that we felt could best reflect the diverse nature of the SF&F genres and demonstrate their commonality as documents of the human cultural experience. Finally, items were described and physically arranged in ways that allowed for the minimum amount of structure, allowing for a freer exhibit experience for visitors.

Theme planning and exhibit arrangement

Cushing Memorial Library & Archives at Texas A&M University operates on a curatorial system, constituted as it is of different discrete collections under the governance of faculty members. Exhibits are a major part of Cushing’s institutional outreach, and they rotate approximately every 8 months so that the full range of collection material can be displayed. Our Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection, which has already been at the center of several popular exhibits, came up on the schedule for a new exhibit in early 2019. In mid-2018, Cushing staff member Jennifer Reibenspies-Stadler proposed an exhibit centered on the possibilities of diversity in science fiction and fantasy; she based the suggestion primarily on her personal interactions with patrons. Jenny recalls, ‘visitors have often requested that material be added to our Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection to incorporate a variety of voices, perspectives, and cultures’ (Brett et al., 2019: i–ii). As a member of the Reading Room staff, Jenny is, of course, best positioned to understand just what kinds of materials interest patrons. She noticed that, for example,

a patron requested Three-Body Problem…and asked if there was more Asian representations in SF in our collections. We’ve also had patrons suggest a purchase for Africana and SF related fiction and Afrofuturism…. Also, I noticed an uptick in the SF usage specifically seeing items like Three-Body and the SF Reviews of diverse authors (women in particular). Also, SF scholars requesting GRRM material for women in Fantasy, too, was cool inspiration, as well to see that several folks were asking, [so] more must surely want more too. Also, I saw that in conversations with patrons (usually what Cushing is about or GOT [Game of Thrones] segue into SF), that there was a misunderstanding about the vast diversity in SF and history of diversity because the mainstream representation is dominant white [and] male. (Reibenspies-Stadler, 2 July 2019, personal communication to Jeremy Brett)

These types of conversations occurred with students, TAMU faculty, and outside researchers alike, reflecting a wide degree of interest in the subject of diversity within the SF&F genres. Although strictly anecdotal rather than based on systematic data, these interactions struck both Jenny and me as an opportunity to use an exhibit as a tool for highlighting the diversities that have always been a part of these genres. A diversity-centered exhibit also would play well into Texas A&M University’s stated commitment to diversity as a positive value that benefits the campus community.

To simply state that ‘diversity is our theme’ is fine, but a thoughtful exhibit benefits from a more focused mission statement. In the case of The Stars Are Ours, we decided that the exhibit would position diversity in its proper place in genre history, which is to say, to demonstrate that these genres have belonged to everybody from their very beginnings. One of our motivations in constructing this exhibit was to rebut publicly certain online controversies seeking to prove the opposite. These controversies include, among others, the Sad/Rabid Puppies’ attempts to hijack the Hugo Awards (Waldman, 2016), the harassment of non-White actors such as Star Wars’ Kelly Marie Tran (Tran, 2018), and the racist/misogynist attempts to sabotage the box office success of films like Black Panther and Captain Marvel (Raftery, 2019); they demonstrate that not everyone accepts that narrative. Although the absolute number of these kinds of noxious fans and commentators is likely small, they are vocal. In their particular ahistorical worldview, the worlds of science fiction and fantasy have traditionally been the province of White males and populated by White male protagonists; they see the presence of non-White, non-male creators and actors as a recent invention, driven by nakedly liberal political motives.

That worldview is, to be blunt, utter nonsense.

As Jessica Lacher-Feldman notes, ‘the issues of objectivity and bias often surface with the discussion and planning of exhibits’ (Lacher-Feldman, 2013: 15). The importance of neutrality as a professional archival value, of course, is not limited simply to exhibits. Debates over ‘archival neutrality’ are ongoing within the profession and have been lively at least since 1977 when historian Howard Zinn published his classic paper ‘Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest’. Zinn noted, famously, that knowledge – and by extension, the documentary record contained within archives – ‘is not neutral either in origin or effect. It reflects the bias of a particular social order…that those with the most power and wealth in society will dominate the field of knowledge, so that it serves their interests’ (Zinn, 1977: 18). He went on to say that ‘the archivist, in subtle ways, tends to perpetuate the political and economic status quo simply by going about his ordinary business. His supposed neutrality is, in other words, a fake’ (p. 20). Zinn was referring primarily to the records of governments and other formal institutions, but his point can be extended to the archives of different subjects, societies and humanity as a whole. Zinn’s thesis was groundbreaking in its loud questioning of the professional acceptance by archivists that they are and should be neutral custodians. That acceptance continues today, and it is pernicious.

Former archivist Jarrett Drake recently built on this contention in a 2017 blog post when he explained why he, an African-American, was leaving the archival profession. Drake stated bluntly that ‘[t]he purpose of the archival profession is to curate the past, not confront it; to entrench inequality, not eradicate it; to erase black lives, not ennoble them’ (Drake, 2017). He observed, like Zinn, that the tendency of archives is to preserve the record of the dominant social orders at the expense of the powerless and neglected.

This debate may seem far afield of the narrower subject of archival exhibitions, but in fact, it goes to the very heart of the exhibit decision-making process. Lacher-Feldman sums it up effectively:

Some critics and archival theorists assert that archivists should take a neutral stance and not mediate users’ understanding of archival records, and that the task of understanding and interpretation should be left to subject specialists outside of the archives to maintain the archival value of objectivity. Still others feel that, as cultural heritage professionals, exhibit curators have the right, obligation, and opportunity to present and interpret their holdings to educate constituents. Biases permeate all views and interpretations. (Lacher-Feldman, 2013: 15, emphasis mine)

I, for one, hold with Lacher-Feldman and my fellow archivists and librarians who believe that we are all subjective creatures in our professional lives, with viewpoints and interpretations that cannot avoid bias. Exhibits are no different: We make conscious decisions about what to include or exclude, what to highlight and what to obscure. In the case of an exhibit that is centered on the value and history of diversity – especially in this age of increasing political and social violence against those that certain groups deem to be inferior to themselves and who feel threatened by the notion of difference – conscientious curators should feel no loyalty to an outmoded concept of ‘neutrality’. Those curators should feel no obligation to present ‘both sides’ or to place on the same level those achievements of diverse individuals or populations, with the malicious, illiberal and dangerous views of the people that oppose them.

Every exhibit can be thought of as a particular moment enshrined in temporal space, or, perhaps, as a stage on which an institution may seize an opportunity to proclaim publicly its values and its mission. What does your institution stand for? Are balance and objectivity your goals? Lacher-Feldman points out that exhibits that take particular stances might undermine broader objectives; this, perhaps, is so. However, what if your broader objective is to take a particular stance? What if, as we at Cushing believe in creating our own exhibit, that at this moment in time a definite stance was needed? What if, as we decided, to give ‘equal’ weight to the dominant and the marginalized is to do a disservice to the latter and give unfair legitimacy to illegitimate views?¹

We designed The Stars Are Ours with these considerations in mind. We do not give space beyond a bare mention anywhere in the exhibit literature to the worldviews mentioned above. It deserves no such space beyond curt dismissal. Our exhibit has a clearly expressed subjective vision – to combat old and pernicious myths about who or which groups ‘own’ science fiction and fantasy and to challenge visitors to look beyond preconceptions. This, then, was the mission statement we informally developed – not simply ‘diversity is a societal, self-evident good’ (though we believe this to be the case), but that ‘these genres are far richer and indicative of the full range of human experience than many believe’. This allowed us to better target the exhibit development process away from diversity in general and towards selecting items that would tie various diversities into different and specific aspects of genre history.

As stated above, one of our concerns was the ‘ghettoization’ of various groups, of violating the overall conception of diversity by reducing a multiplicity of voices to a set of boxes to be checked off. Institutions planning diversity-centered exhibits need to consider just in what kind of light they intend to show diversity. In some cases, the focus will be on a single strand of diversity (i.e. ‘The African-American Experience at University XYZ’), whereas in others multiple diversities are being showcased (i.e. ‘The History of Underrepresented Groups at University XYZ’).

One should note, however, that even single strands are made up of many parts: how, for example, would ‘The African-American Experience at University XYZ’ accurately reflect the nature of that experience should it not include, say, African-American women, or African-American LGBTs? Badly, in fact, because the experiences of these latter two groups will be significantly different from those of cisgender African-American men. It would be a poorly considered exhibit that claimed to document diversity for any particular group, entity, or phenomenon and did not take into account the differences in life courses for different groups within the larger whole. Therefore, on the subject of Science Fiction & Fantasy, we recognized our responsibility to include as many different kinds of contributing diversities as our available gallery space made possible. Again, though, it serves diversity ill to reduce it to a checklist and to placement in appropriate corners.

(Even had we wanted to do so, in many cases it would have been difficult to locate an appropriate corner: for example, the late, legendary SF author Octavia E Butler was both a woman and African-American. Had we pursued a more compartmentalized type of exhibit design, where would we have placed her? In either case, we would have given less weight to a particular aspect of her life and identity, which would be a disservice to Butler.)

We avoided this issue by deciding to organize the exhibit thematically rather than by diversity type. Instead of having exhibit subsections devoted to Women, or LGBTs, or Non-Whites, our exhibit instead has subsections on the following themes: Time Travel, Alternate History, Eco-SF, First Contact/The Other, Futures, Afrofuturism, Fantasy, Horror, Non-Typical Superheroes, Space Opera, Near-Future, Fanzines and Art & Audiovisual Media.² In expanding the borders of exhibition beyond a static collection of distinct groups, we are allowing different diversities to speak to one another and to inform one another in a different context.

For example, one of the chosen themes was ‘Eco-SF’, that is, works of SF&F dealing with ecological issues. It is a subgenre that has taken on new significance of late due to concerns about accelerating climate change, so we felt it would be a relevant theme to highlight here. Like the other exhibit themes, Eco SF consists of a number of works from across the subgenre that reflect different kinds of diversities (Figure 2 displays the catalog entry that describes the theme).

Figure 2.

Introductory text for ‘Eco-SF’, in The Stars Are Ours: Infinite Diversities in Science Fiction and Fantasy exhibit catalog, 2019.

I list below the items in the Eco-SF case as well as the characteristics that merited their inclusion in the exhibit.

Dune (Frank Herbert, 1965): A seminal work of science fiction, from a giant in the genre. Explores cultural varieties among gender and religion. Highlights the Fremen, a stand-in culture for North African Bedouins.

The Fifth Season (NK Jemisin, 2015): A work of science fiction both critically acclaimed and popular (winner of the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novel) by an African-American woman. First Hugo Award winner in that category from an African-American.

Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood, 2003): A novel from a prominent and legendary female writer in the field.

Ammonite (Nicola Griffith, 1992): An award-winning debut novel exploring, among other things, the subversion of gender expectations. Author is lesbian, as well as disabled and an advocate for the visibility of LGBTs and the disabled in literature.

Carnival (Elizabeth Bear, 2006): A novel concerned greatly with subverting traditional expectations and clichés about ecological utopias and societies led by women.

Blackfish City (Sam J Miller, 2018): A novel from an emerging and critically acclaimed gay author about a future at risk through the actions of xenophobic and close-minded governments. Novel contains multiple non-cisgender and non-binary characters.

Trail of Lightning (Rebecca Roanhorse, 2018): An award-nominated debut novel from a new and critically acclaimed Native American/African-American writer, set in post-apocalyptic Indian Country, with Native characters and based on Navajo legend and cosmology. A relatively rare example of Native Americans in fantasy literature.

Memory of Water (Emma Itaranta, 2012): A novel from a female Finnish novelist, set in a country unfamiliar to most American readers, with a strong female protagonist.

So then, in choosing a thematic scheme of organization, we have succeeded in expressing a range of different types of characters, creators, settings and themes, all within a finite physical space. This lets us demonstrate how a single topic can contain multitudes, rather than being defined by a single type of diversity.

Choosing items and decisions about text

When selecting items for the exhibit, we used a combination of factors to ensure as rich an experience for visitors as we could create. I believe that the best exhibits are those reflecting as much as possible the variety of collections or items in an institution; this may sound like a commonsensical enough principle, but I am sure that all of us have, at one time or another, attended an exhibit that proved to be utterly flat and two-dimensional in its choice of items. This flatness might be simply aesthetic (too many items of one type or one color, for example), or it might result from a poverty of information, or a lack of concern with sparking the interest of the public. Effective exhibits should strive, on the other hand, to be memorable to a wide range of audiences.

Every item in the exhibit relates to the overarching theme of highlighting genre diversity and is an excellent example of its relevant theme. In addition, however, we took into account the following characteristics for item selection. These characteristics were agreed upon in advance by the exhibit committee and all were at the forefront of our thought process when we were selecting items. We did not consult any formal studies or museum/library guidelines on this, but instead chose to draw from our experience with previous Cushing exhibits as well as our own observations as exhibit patrons in other institutions.

Name recognition/Genre stature: How significant is the creator or creation to the genre? How well known is it to the viewing public?

Thematic relevance: Does the work and/or creator relate strongly to the theme of genre diversity?

Aesthetic appeal: Will the item catch the eye? Is it colorful? Does it contain particularly striking or memorable imagery? Aesthetics drove our decision to focus mainly on displaying items closed, so their covers with their colors and their oft-striking art would be the focus of attention. Few items are displayed open to a particular story, poem, or passage, because lines of printed text usually fail to catch the attention that a colorful image might. This decision did have negative consequences, inasmuch as it meant we could include few anthologies of short stories in the exhibit. This is unfortunate because so much wonderful and diverse genre work has been and is done in short form. However, we felt this sacrifice worth it for the aesthetic effect.

Connection to Cushing Library: Did the author or creator donate items or archives to our Library? Can we emphasize a relationship between them and us, and thus highlight our reputation as an SF&F collecting institution?

Range of materials type: Although a library – and therefore a place that houses books more than any other item – what non-book items can we show, and therefore provide a more varied viewing experience?

Personal preferences of curator: At first, this may seem inappropriate or counterintuitive. Institutions often try to build an exhibit along strictly neutral lines that entirely reflect the subject. However, as noted above, I contend that cultural institutions can be neutral in absolutely nothing, and that includes exhibits. Whether it be collecting practices or exhibitions, these activities always reflect the prejudices and preferences of the people in charge of them. An exhibit is, in the end, the child of the curator(s) who construct it. I do not believe it does any disservice to an exhibit should a dedicated and thoughtful curator consider their own personal likes when selecting items. Of course, the exhibit should not devolve into a simple ‘Top 20 Favorite Books of Curator XYZ’; it should always reflect the chosen theme as much as possible.

Recognition by patrons: Are there relevant items that will immediately capture a visitor’s attention and draw them in to the exhibit as a whole?

Part as an example of the whole: Due to space limitations, we decided to restrict ourselves to one item from any one creator. (A few small exceptions were made, as space became available.) We recognized that this might result in a limited perception of a creator’s overall career, which made it even more important that the item we selected for any one creator reflect their skill and literary significance.

‘Resistance items’: Are there items that would reflect or comment on the hostility that some people have expressed towards the concept of diversity in the SF&F genres? Are there items that, by showing them, demonstrate our deep-seated belief in the value and history of genre diversity and thus proclaim resistance to hatred towards or dehumanization of people?

Certainly not every item in the exhibit has every characteristic on this list, but every item has more than one. No item was selected for the exhibit without the greatest of care. Here I provide several examples of chosen items, showing the factors that went into their selection.

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach (Kelly Robson, 2018). Theme: Time Travel. (Figure 3 shows the cover of Robson's book)

Figure 3.

Entry for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson, in The Stars Are Ours: Infinite Diversities in Science Fiction and Fantasy exhibit catalog, 2019.

This work by Robson is at the nexus of multiple selection considerations. The cover is striking and beautifully done, therefore prone to catch the viewer’s eye. Lucky Peach is the first novella from an award-winning writer and is receiving much deserved critical praise. Robson is a lesbian author, whose main character has been disabled by disease and must compensate through technological means. It is, in my opinion, a well-written and beautiful work. Finally, Robson has donated her papers to our library, giving her an intimate connection to us.

‘The Black God’s Kiss’ (CL Moore, Weird Tales October 1934). Theme: Fantasy.

Moore (1911–1987) was a groundbreaking female writer of the pulp magazine era, notable for a number of popular stories. We could use the actual 1934 magazine as the exhibit item, which would attract visitors interested in particularly old materials (and, as usual with Weird Tales, the cover is colorful and attention grabbing). ‘Kiss’ may not be Moore’s most famous story – that honor probably goes to 1933s ‘Shambleau’ – but it is historically significant in that its main character, Jirel of Joiry, is the first female protagonist in sword-and-sorcery fantasy.

‘Rey’/’Finn’/’Rose Tico’ (Character posters from the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy). Theme: Art & Audiovisual Media.

This set of three posters portrays characters featured in the recent Star Wars sequel films: Rey (portrayed by Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran; see Figure 4). All three characters are played by women and/or racial minorities. All three have broadened the visible diversity of the Star Wars universe. All three are part of a media franchise that is vastly popular with and immediately recognizable to visitors. Finally, all three actors have faced opposition (in the case of Tran, to the point of internet harassment that drove her from social media) by small groups of racist and/or misogynistic malcontents objecting to their casting as ‘forced diversity’ and ‘SJW pandering’.

Figure 4.

Entry for Rose Tico, in The Stars Are Ours: Infinite Diversities in Science Fiction and Fantasy exhibit catalog, 2019.

Don’t Bite the Sun (Tanith Lee, 1976; manuscript from 1968). Theme: Tanith Lee (stand-alone).

Lee (1947–2015) was a peerless writer in multiple genres, including science fiction, horror and dark fantasy, a winner of countless awards and the recipient of popular and critical acclaim throughout her long and prolific career. She was notable for her fluid and ambiguous depictions of sexuality, in works that include the novel Don’t Bite the Sun. Given the chance, I would have preferred to highlight a different work by Lee that more prominently featured gender fluidity, such as her fantasy epic Tales from the Flat Earth. However, I decided to feature Sun instead because in addition to having the book itself, we have the manuscript for the novel donated by Lee herself. The manuscript has doodles as well as explanatory notes from Lee to me that provide context for the novel’s creation. By pairing the manuscript with the book it eventually became, we have expanded the variety of item types on display and added an eye-catching tableau.

Catalog text

If an exhibit features a catalog, or other descriptive material, the text should be a careful consideration. For an exhibit centered on diversity, the text writer needs to think about how creators/contributors will be identified. How much do you want to stress the characteristics that make an individual diverse in one way or another? These may seem like simple questions – why would you not want to highlight diversity in an exhibit on that very subject? – but, as with most things in life, it depends on the situation. As with the thematic decision not to ghettoize creators, we decided to do as little as possible to identify the characteristics that qualified those creators for inclusion in the exhibit.

Again, drawing on our committee members' personal experiences as exhibit visitors at Cushing and elsewhere, text for exhibit signage is simple and short. For published works, placards list the author, the title of the work, the publisher, the publication date and if the work is a first edition and/or signed, language to that effect. For the art and audiovisual works displayed on the gallery walls, placards list the title of the work, the date of the poster’s printing, the producing studio/network and the date of production. For posters depicting specific characters, the name of the character and the actor portraying them are also included. In my experience, exhibits that feature too much text in their signage, while certainly rich in information, can have the unfortunate side effect of information overload. I have never subscribed to the belief that one should have to read an exhibit exhaustively; explanatory text should supplement the items on display rather than take up large amounts of time, space and attention that could be better spent by patrons in actually examining the items. However, the point more specific to the theme of diversity is that exhibit signage here does not explicitly identify the nature of the diversities applicable to each item.

Neither does, in almost every case, the more elaborate text for the exhibit catalog. Again, our objective was to prevent as much as was practical the compartmentalization of creators into boxes that fail to reflect the multifaceted reality of human beings. To that end, we rarely identify an author’s race, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or other diverse characteristics, allowing the reader instead to infer these from the specific catalog entry (e.g. looking at what pronoun is used to describe the author). We implicitly invite the exhibit patron to make the diversity connections themselves, which we believe adds an extra dimension of thoughtfulness to their exploration of the exhibit. Of course, the text for each item details information about the work itself and about the creator, which links them to the overall theme of diversities.

To give one example, in the entry for the Near-Future novel Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott, the text reads as follows:

Melissa Scott. Trouble and Her Friends (Tor, 1994). First edition.

‘Cyberpunk arose as an influential SF subgenre in the mid-1980s, defined by near-future settings, by explorations of computer networks, the hackers who live within them and their societal implications and by its juxtaposition of high technology with increasing social breakdown and fragmentation. Trouble and Her Friends, which won the 1995 Lambda Award for Best LGBT Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, is author Melissa Scott (1960–)s addition to the cyberpunk phenomenon. Ex-hacker India Carless (aka “Trouble”) is engaged in a new and legal life, but she and her former lover Cerise bring together their old gang to stop a new hacker claiming to be Trouble. Scott’s book is notable in cyberpunk for featuring a female protagonist with agency, one who must rely on communities and cooperation (as opposed to the traditional cyberpunk “cowboy” ethos that stressed the power of individuals over monolithic organizations), and one who is not only a lesbian but a member of a mainly LGBT community (Brett et al., 2019: 94).’

Scott herself publicly identifies as LGBT, but nowhere in this entry do we mention that. Instead, we stress her focus on LGBT characters, with a possible hint at her own sexual orientation with the mention of the novel’s Lambda Award win. Patrons are invited, should they choose to read the book and find out more about Scott, to discover her sexual orientation. In this way, we have, we hope, managed to thread the needle by implying Scott’s orientation (one of the diversities represented by her and her book) rather than saying it outright, which would immediately place her in a set category.

In some cases, we build on the simple explanatory text by providing an opportunity for the creator and/or work to speak for themselves. For example, in the entry for Cassandra Khaw’s novella Hammers on Bone, we describe the work, a horror novella that has the abuse of children as one of its themes, by noting, ‘Khaw uses her narrative to conflate the image of literal monsters with the more metaphorical ones that threaten the vulnerable’. To make the point even more direct – reflecting both Khaw’s narrative passion and the importance of the theme to real people – we ended this entry by using Khaw’s own language from the novella’s dedication. ‘To all the monsters hiding in the world, I hope the children will skin you alive. To the children in the world, let no one say you can’t make your monsters bleed’ (Brett et al., 2019: 76; see Figure 5 for catalog entry).

Figure 5.

Entry for Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw, in The Stars Are Ours: Infinite Diversities in Science Fiction and Fantasy exhibit catalog, 2019.

We also sometimes use brief quotations from interviews, blog posts and other sources to bolster the entry text. For example, in the entries for Rebecca Roanhorse’s novel Trail of Lightning and Amal El-Mohtar’s short story ‘Seasons of Glass and Iron’, each author is quoted from an interview in which they explain their rationale for writing their particular works. Those rationales stress the diversities of both author and work.

Finally, we decided to take the ‘speaking for themselves’ to another level, and in the process expand the number of diverse voices in the exhibit beyond those who actually created exhibit items. We found thematically relevant quotations from specifically exhibited items (such as NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season), from item creators (such as Ursula K Le Guin) and from other creators and sources otherwise not featured in the exhibit (such as Kathleen Ann Goonan, or Philip K Dick’s The Crack in Space). Many of these quotations were interspersed throughout the catalog, transforming it from a mere exhibit description into a rich chorus of diverse voices. We could not fit all the chosen quotations into the catalog, however; what we did instead was to set up an electronic monitor on the gallery floor that displayed the full number of quotations (77 in all) rotating every 20 s. Doing something like this is a relatively simple way to maximize available exhibit space and emphasize an exhibit theme without needing to crowd the cases or walls with additional materials (see Figure 6 for an example of a quote displayed on the monitor).

Figure 6.

Exhibit monitor.

Physical display

The exhibit theme being diversity rather than a more straightforward topic that lends itself to a linear narrative, physical placement of items in the exhibit gallery followed no particular structure for patrons to follow (see Figure 7 for a shot of the exhibit gallery). Each theme was given its own case (apart from Fantasy, which occupies two cases to compensate somewhat for the overrepresentation of more strictly science fiction-related materials in the rest of the exhibit). Items in each case were distributed based not, say, from first published to latest, primarily on the aesthetic appeal of items in relation to each other. Not only did this placement increase attractiveness to the viewer but it also, as with everything else we did in reference to the exhibit, stressed the theme of diversity by emphasizing difference and the erasure of strictures, boundaries and lines. A visitor to The Stars Are Ours walks into the exhibit through one of three gallery entrances and encounters a different exhibit theme (and different visual materials on the walls) at each point. Once they enter the gallery space, they are free to follow their own path without consideration – at all – to an overarching narrative but only a general theme.

Figure 7.

Exhibit gallery space.

By not forcing the patron to travel from an established point A to point B to point C, the exhibit opens up possibilities for visitors to make their own journeys and their own intellectual discoveries. It gives visitors a particular kind of freedom that a more traditional exhibit model might not, encouraging visitor autonomy rather than letting the curator(s) determine the course of the story. This more freewheeling model may not, of course, work for every exhibiting institution, but I believe that curators working on diversity-centered exhibits could benefit from expanding their conceptions of what is possible in physical presentation of an exhibit narrative structure.

Conclusion

The recognition of diversity as an important societal good (and a reality that cannot be realistically ignored) is becoming increasingly normalized. More cultural institutions recognize that there are countless human stories and identities within their holdings waiting to be told through the medium of exhibits. There are as many methods of exhibiting diversities as there are of expressing them; museums and libraries have wonderful opportunities to showcase these diversities in all kinds of dynamic ways as their space and resources allow. The Stars Are Ours has been a popular and successful attempt by Cushing Memorial Library & Archives to manifest the expansive and intellectual concept of diversity in a physical space.³

Of course, the needs, mission and deliverables of exhibiting institutions will differ depending on the individual exhibit. However, we at Cushing have learned some valuable lessons from the construction of The Stars Are Ours. Its popularity (over 3500 visitors at the time of writing, making it one of our most well attended exhibits) signifies a real interest on campus and elsewhere in exhibits that focus on diversity. The complete lack of criticism from any quarter, or pushback from people who question our exhibit subjectivity or demand an increased presence from White cisgender males, is also indicative – it shows that ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’ are not requirements for an informative exhibit. Our use and the popular reception of an electronic monitor to display quotes shows the value of supplemental resources in expanding the informational content of an exhibit without requiring additional objects to be prepared and displayed. It also demonstrates the value of having diverse voices speak to the exhibit theme rather than having that theme filtered through the single voice of the exhibit curator or committee. Finally, The Stars Are Ours provides a practical and successful example of describing human diversity without reducing it to a series of discrete and separate conceptual boxes.

I hope that these lessons may provide guidance to cultural institutions looking to promote the diversity of both our shared history and culture and their own rich holdings that deserve a wider audience. As the diversities of the human experience become more and more recognized as both healthy and good for a progressive society, so too will society benefit from more exhibits showcasing that variety in all its endless forms most beautiful.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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