SESSION
I: COLLECTING
“Women
are Transmogrifying”
Mandy Paul (History SA)
Blue
Jeans and Jungle Greens, an exhibition on the sixties
and seventies in South Australia, featured the emergence of the Women’s
Liberation Movement as one of the social movements of the time, and put it in
its immediate social and political context. Looking for objects to represent
feminism in the period, and finding none in the collection, I sought the advice
of a colleague – who lent her collection of badges. This paper will explore the
reasons why objects relating to the Women’s Liberation Movement are still in
drawers in people’s houses rather than museum stores. It will also acknowledge
the significant impact feminist curators have had on shaping the practice of
public history in Australian social history museums over the last three
decades. Reflecting on this work, I will ponder whether interpretation grounded
in feminist historiography can render ‘feminist’ a much wider range of objects
than stickers and badges.
“The Gendered Politics of Collections”
Sophia Maalsen (U Syd)
The symposium recognises the
role of material culture and museums in fostering social memory while also
noting the absence of second wave feminism in museum representation. This paper
will look at possible attitudes that thwart the representation of feminist
representation in museums by focusing on the act of collecting and collections
themselves. Women’s objects of collection, more frequently reflecting items of
domestic spheres and everyday existence, have frequently in the past not been
considered worthy items and therefore lack the qualities of a respected
‘collection’. It is more than just recognising items of feminist material
culture, but the acknowledgement that women’s material culture counts. Thus
this paper reflects less on individual items of material culture but on the
structural positions of collecting, which regard them as so.
“Feminist futures, feminist pasts
and generational relationships: Responding to second wave activist material
culture in Adelaide collections”
Petra Mosmann (Flinders)
In Adelaide
there are several libraries and galleries that have archived second wave
activist material including: the University of Adelaide Special Collections,
Flinders University Art Gallery/Special Collections, the State Library of South
Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia. This paper explores the
collection and curation of second wave activist material in these institutions
and the generational relationships implied and created by these archives. This
paper considers second wave material in the hands of feminists that have no
activist memory, who gain what Zora Simic calls ‘feminist competency’ primarily
through academic accomplishment rather than activism. It argues that collecting
the remnants of feminist activism locates a feminist future in the
self-reflexive archiving of feminisms pasts, which sets out new relationships
between feminist ‘generations’.
“First
steps in digitisation: Irene Greenwood and Woman
to Woman”
Kate Makowiecka (Murdoch)
Irene Greenwood was known nationally
and internationally for her lifetime’s work in the peace and women’s movements.
In the 1980s, Irene donated many boxes of personal correspondence, books,
journals and papers to Murdoch University. Some of this material has been catalogued,
but many boxes remain as they arrived. Amongst the contents of several boxes
are typescripts of her Woman to Woman radio programs, together with
files of correspondence between Irene and her many women listeners, and other
relevant odds and ends. Murdoch University Library had been planning for some
time to trial the digitisation of archived material to see what was involved in
terms of time, money, equipment, staffing, and so on; in 2011 it was decided
that we would use Irene’s Woman to Woman scripts for our first
digitisation project. This paper tells the story of the project so far, and
starts with negotiating the copyright in Irene’s typescripts.
SESSION II: EXHIBITING
“A Mediterranean
Bazaar : The Bazar du Genre exhibition
at the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM) in
Marseille, 2013”
Bronwyn Winter (U Syd)
One of the MuCEM’s two inaugural temporary exhibitions
is “Au Bazar du Genre” (at the Gender Bazaar). It is dedicated to exploring the
recent history of feminist—and LGBT—challenges to the order of male domination
in the twenty-one countries that surround the Mediterranean Sea. The multimedia
exhibition features feminist activist memorabilia, newsreel footage, scenes
from classic films, videos of more recent ‘activist’ performance art, and
various visual artworks. The exhibition catalogue features articles by many
well-known academics, which, along with the place in which the exhibition
occurs, confers considerable prestige on it. This paper will discuss these
various facets of the exhibition and reactions to it in France, as an example
of a certain institutionalisation of feminist memory that has both salutary and
problematic aspects.
“Acting Out: performing feminisms in
the contemporary art museum”
Courtney
Pedersen (QUT) and Rachael Haynes (QUT)
The
position that feminist art holds within the art museum is complex and often
contradictory. There is a very real danger that when absorbed into the museum
collection, feminist art can become a historicizing category; framed as a
singular movement rather than a still relevant set of strategies. Since
2010, the feminist artist collective LEVEL has been involved in a range of activities
designed to reinvigorate the discussion of women’s position in the art world
and society more broadly. They have been commissioned to provide a public
program as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s WAR IS OVER! (IF YOU
WANT IT): YOKO ONO exhibition in late 2013. This paper discusses
the design of that project as an attempt to move beyond the script of feminism
as a historical moment, and back to the lived experience of feminist art as
political understanding and social engagement.
“What
is a Feminist Object? Things that liberate and material culture”
Alison Bartlett (UWA) and Margaret Henderson (UQ)
Investigating the idea of feminist material
culture this paper focuses on
‘what is a feminist object?’ Finding that museum studies literature still
struggles to address feminist materials and methods, we briefly survey some
established women’s museums and then draw some more specific observations from
two recent projects: a collection of objects on feminist activism for a
national museum; and a collection of essays focused on feminist objects. Both
of these projects are specifically in relation to Australian feminist activism
from the 1970s onward. The conclusions we draw around the nature of feminist
things suggests this is a rich source of memory, material culture, and physical
evidence of socially transformative ideas which offer innovative ways of
attending to feminist times and social movement histories which remain
marginalized and therefore at risk of cultural amnesia.
“The
Military Museum as a site for feminist
history.”
Lindsey V. Sharman (U Calgary)
Existing military museums and archives play a
major role in sharing the achievements of women and function as custodians of
historical and contemporary artifacts relating to second wave feminism. With a
backdrop of military history, we can examine major historical events including
suffrage, inclusion in the general workforce and military service, one can even
look at contemporary issues surrounding reproductive freedom by examining the
use of rape as a weapon of war. There are current programs at The Military
Museums, Calgary, (TMM) and The Canadian War Museum, Ottawa (CWM) that
incorporate narratives of feminist history into the overall story of Canada,
and the world, at war. These projects not only function to present and preserve
histories, but also strive to change the typically misogynist lens through
which their publics view history.
