Image Caption: Some of the early issues of Transvestia were printed in this miniature format (left). This allowed a reader to conceal their copy within a shirt pocket. It was very important to show how the size differed for the exhibition.

I’m Amelia Smith, and I’m the digital exhibit designer for the Trans Activism Oral History Project with the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria and the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory. The exhibit I’m creating is the culmination of a series of oral histories conducted with trans activists and advocates over the decades. As a transgender historian and museum professional, it’s been an absolute pleasure to go through these histories and craft a story that can engage and inform audiences.

A total of 21 interviews were conducted through the project, all of them at least two hours long. It was my job then to screen every interview and craft a narrative that would do these histories justice. I settled on the ways that communities evolved around the sharing of information. But that was just the start of the exhibition.

Once I knew what the exhibit was going to be, I got to dive into the collection at the Transgender Archives. I truly cannot express how rewarding this was. It is one thing to see a PDF of Transvestia from 1960, but it is a whole other experience to actually have an issue in front of you and in your hands. There are a lot of little details you discover that do not come across in fully digital spaces.

This inspired one of my earliest curatorial decisions. Transvestia, which began printing in 1960, had a whole different binding than I would have expected. Whereas a lot of other publications were stapled together or just fitted inside folded paper, Transvestia had a spine. I knew immediately that I had to find a way to convey the physicality of these objects that was not possible solely with scans. So, I borrowed the library’s camera and set out to take photos of the objects.

One of my proudest moments in the archive was when I found a particular episode of the Phil Donahue Show on a U-Matic tape. The episode, date January 29, 1980, was essentially lost media. It featured crossdresser Ari Kane and included contact information in the credits. This meant that people could get in touch directly without having to go through the show’s producers. This particular episode had had a lasting effect, so finding a copy and knowing it could actually be in the exhibition was a moment of celebration for me.

Another aspect that I was excited to explore through this exhibit is the medium of digital exhibitions. I believe that digital exhibits are still in their infancy. Digital offers many different challenges and opportunities from those of physical exhibits, but these conversations have only just begun to be had. With this exhibition, I wanted to see what I could do that would not have been possible in a brick-and-mortar museum. One example I have planned is some glitch art; intentionally causing a PDF not to read to represent objects that were not collected and have been lost to time in order to provoke audiences to reflect on what factors cause something to be preserved. To read more on my thoughts on digital exhibitions, I have a post on my blog going into more detail.

This only scratches the surface of the exhibition. I hope this little taste of what the exhibition will be has whet your appetite and you will check it out once it is launched on the University of Victoria’s website.

Stay tuned!