Transcestry celebrates a decade of community collecting at The Museum of Transology

The Museum of Transology is celebrating ten years of community collecting with a new exhibition: Transcestry. Home to the world’s largest collection of objects representing trans, non-binary and intersex lives, the museum’s archive of artefacts and works has now been displayed in its largest show to date, showcasing 1,000 objects and stories donated by members of the community.

This milestone has come at a poignant moment for the museum. When founder E-J Scott was deciding how they wanted to celebrate the collection’s upcoming anniversary, “we were at the height of pre-election culture wars”, they say. As the trans community continue to be “attacked in every direction”, their existence a remains misguided subject of global debate. Just last week the UK’s supreme court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. In response to such sustained attacks, E-J thought: “I can’t put on an exhibition that says it’s worse now for trans people than it was when I started collecting in 2014!”. That’s when they realised they had to tell a story of “trans joy not trans hate, of what cultural vibrancy we were celebrating, not what cultural oppression we were experiencing”.

With a focus on ‘celebration’, E-J noted the 15 trans pride festivals that took place in the UK and Ireland every year. With funding from the Art Fund, they then travelled to all 15 events to collect placards and stickers and badges and flags for the collection. “From there I hooked up all the Trans Prides with their local museum, library and archives and we held National Days of Trans Collecting with funding from the National Heritage Lottery Fund,” they share. The community ended up collecting 467 new objects for the museum’s archive in total – all of which are now on display for the first time in the Trancestry exhibition.

“When the show closes, all of these artefacts will go back to the areas they belong to, and we will have 15 Museum of Transologies for local trans, non-binary and intersex communities to use for their own projects, and to build on in the future to halt the erasure of transcestry,” E-J adds.

Alongside new acquisitions, artefacts that have been donated to the collection over the last decade by thousands of members of the community make up the rest of the exhibition. Everything from shaving cream and socks to lipstick and testosterone – material culture that reflects trans, non-binary and intersex lives. Each object is adorned with a handwritten note explaining the significance of the object to the donor’s personal experience of gender; testimonies that ensure trans, non-binary an intersex people’s lived experiences are recorded in their own words.

Divided into themes including fashion, healthcare and beauty, transology, family, pride and protest, the collection has been designed by Scar Barclay to affirm the museums mission to “halt the erasure of trans lives from history, to tackle the misrepresentation of trans people in the political sphere” from all angles. This mass of memories, and medical ephemera commemorating private gender milestones alongside hundreds of protest placards from mass public rallies, including Black Trans Lives Matter, sews together the legacy of the museum and its powerful collective voice.

Hundreds of community curators have been involved in the making of the show – just a portion of the 3,000 artefacts the collection holds in total are on display. The project continues to use archiving and collecting of community stories as an important counterpoint to harmful transphobic discourse: “I hope visitors to the exhibition learn from the real-life, everyday stories about trans life, told by trans people... Stories that cut through the harmful disinformation that surrounds us”, E-J concludes. “I hope from what they learn that they feel just how urgent it is to stop the violence, to stop the transphobia.”

The exhibition is running until 11 May 2025 at The Museum of Transology, Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins 1 Granary Square, London.