Dr. Spencer J. Harrison

Museum of Closetry

April 26, 2025 - July 20, 2025

Dr. Spencer J. Harrison

Museum of Closetry

curated by Lucas Azevedo Cabral

The Museum of Closetry is a love letter to the hidden, forgotten, and erased.

Through found objects, assemblage, and layered narratives, Dr. Spencer J. Harrison and curator Lucas Azevedo Cabral create a fictional museum that imagines queer history as abundant and visible. The exhibition reclaims cultural gaps and archival silence, using them as fertile ground to craft a world where queer identities have always thrived.

The Museum of Closetry is a space of contradictions: historical yet speculative, intimate yet expansive, playful yet profound. The objects on display are accompanied by interpretive labels that interweave storytelling with historical and imagined contexts, drawing the viewer into a complex tapestry of identities and experiences.

This exhibition is more than an archive—it’s an act of resistance and reclamation. By presenting queer narratives as vibrant, messy, and beautifully incomplete, The Museum of Closetry invites viewers to reflect on what it means to belong, to remember, and to make space for the stories that history has tried to hide.

While strides have been made in queer visibility, the reality of growing bigotry reminds us that countless queer lives are still lived in silence, leaving us to wonder how much remains unseen.

Spencer J. Harrison (he/him) is an Artist, Activist, and Educator. Spencer has been painting and creating installation-based art for forty years, and his work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

As an activist, his focus is on human rights for all who are marginalized, with his greatest focus on youth. For instance, he is the founder of Camp fYrefly, Ontario (a camp for LGBTQ2S&A youth) and has been an Artist-in-Residence with the Toronto District School Board for fifteen years. In this role, Spencer operates an open door, public studio where he has produced many works, including the first painted PhD dissertation in Canada.

Lucas Azevedo Cabral is a curator and arts administrator with a background in communications and community engagement. Lucas has held positions at McIntosh Gallery, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Artcite Inc., and Artspace Peterborough.

Recent curatorial projects include Mikiki: Port Manteau and José Andrés Mora: The Mornings in Reverse at Artspace, HOTSPOT at Artcite Inc., and Conversations: The 2021 Windsor/Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art at The Art Gallery of Windsor.