Guided tour and curator's talk TransTrans Exhibition Curator's Talk

Exploring early gender-diverse histories

With impressive photographs and letters that have never been shown before the exhibition delves into the interactions among German, North American, and Australian trans communities, as well as their collaborations with scientific researchers around questions of gender diversity.

The communities in focus include the LGBTIQ+ subcultures of Weimar Germany, US-based trans* activists such as Carla Erskine who established intimate trans support networks in the 1950s or entertainer singer and actress Christine Jorgensen as well as their Australian counterparts such as Peter Alexander and Lady Paula Howard.

The researchers in question, while based globally, were often of German- or Austrian-Jewish background, including Magnus Hirschfeld from the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, Harry Benjamin in the US and Herbert Bower in Melbourne.

This exhibition has been previously shown in Calgary, Berlin and Munich. It was originally conceived by Alex Bakker, Rainer Herrn, Michael Thomas Taylor, and Annette F. Timm and has been adapted for Australian audiences by Birgit Lang and Katie Sutton and the Australian Queer Archives (AQuA) and in consultation and conversation with trans community groups including Transgender Victoria and Seahorse Victoria.

Please join us for a talk when curator Birgit Lang gives us some insight in the exhibition. These events talke place as part of German Week Melbourne.  
   
 

Back