Crowdfunding the Queer Museum: A Polycentric Identity Quarrel

This chapter studies the Queer Museum, an art exhibition held in Brazil, to discuss how identities can be interpreted as knowledge commons and the importance of polycentric institutional settings. The chapter uses the notion of institutional polycentricity to demonstrate that agents actively create solutions to face market-state constraints and better govern resources such as art and identity expressions. One of these solutions is crowdfunding, an alternative open funding mechanism that can act as both an enabling infrastructure and a resource that agents draw on to pursue their common goals. Finally, the chapter argues that certain types of knowledge commons (i.e., identities) develop especially in situations of public contestation and that, in such cases, they benefit from a diverse institutional setting. These identity struggles for representation ultimately fuel markets, social life in general and feedback into established organizations.