Over Half of Us
Patriotism and Patriarchy: Unveiling the Gender-based Power Relations at Heritage Sites
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Elena Settimini, Valentina Pinoia
In 1938, at the dawn of a war that took the hate against the Other to the extreme, Virginia Woolf celebrates women and their being “outsiders,” namely outside of the patriarchal logic of power, with this sentence: “as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” Sixty years later, the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai proposes to rethink “monopatriotism” through the help of new patriotisms, like women’s, disables’, or scientists’. Through these “transnations,” or “postnational imaginaries,” his hope is to overcome the inability of the nation-states to tolerate diversity. Given this context, it is useful to analyse the role that gender relations play in the heritage making process - conceived as a powerful tool of identity building - and to question the male dominant heritage discourse. Through the World Heritage List, UNESCO is aiming to present an inclusive heritage, blurring the boundaries at regional, national, and international level. Despite often mentioning the rights and values of minorities, the nominations – and the consequent interpretation and management of the sites – often fail to mention women and risk generating a “disinheritance” by marginalising the role of women and their contributions to history. How could gender equality be integrated into policies and practices related to cultural heritage interpretation and conservation? Could gender studies be the tool through which we reimagine the world, by unveiling the power relations that bring to the construction of the Other par excellence, i.e. woman?
The Digital Remove: Discontinuous Gazes on the Shared Heritage of the "Hottentot Venus"
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Richard Higgs
Sara Baartman (a.k.a Saartjie Baartman or the "Hottentot Venus") was a woman of Khoekhoe origin who was presented as a live exhibit in Europe in the nineteenth century. Preceding and after the return of her remains to her native Southern Africa she has become an icon of decoloniality, intersectionality, African feminism, and many other ideologies and positions in identity politics. Ongoing representations and re-representations of her continue to attract debate and elicit heated emotions. This paper explores some of the ethics, politics, and dynamics that come into play in the creation and display of digital surrogates, derivatives, and simulacra of her person, using as a starting point a project created by a group of postgraduate students in Digital Curation which was facilitated by the author as convenor of the course. The definitive discontinuity of digital signals in media and formats enforces a remove at several levels from the physical object and natural identity of a person or representations of them, thus entailing a conscious or unconscious mediation of meaning and identity in the political act of curation. In any museum display the shared gaze is mediated and interrupted, resulting in discontinuities of heritage; further discontinuities in representation and sharing arise in the online world, enforcing removes that question and re-frame the nature of heritage itself.
A Museum That Rethinks Itself to Improve Inclusion : The Case of the Museum of Navarre
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amaia Arriaga
The Museum of Navarre, a museum of heritage and history, is immersed in a process of change with the aim of improving the experiences of its visitors and their inclusion. To this end, it is transforming its policies on what is exhibited, how it is exhibited, and how knowledge on what is exhibited is communicated. Our research team has accompanied the museum staff in this process of rethinking the institution. In this paper we analyze the difficulties that have arisen in this process, considering that they are transferable to any museum institution. We analyse, specially, exhibitions that have sought to include works by women artists and feminist discourses, as well as changes in the museographic perspective, with special emphasis on the resources and mediation activities that have been offered. It is concluded that it is necessary to review the notion of inclusion from which the changes are posed in order to achieve a more profound and enriching visitor participation and inclusion.
Threading Place Narratives: A Visitor-Centered Framework for Curating Contemporary Women Textile Artists
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ann Rowson Love, Tyler Law
This paper articulates a curatorial framework that combines feminist systems thinking theory (Stephens, 2013; Villeneuve & Love, 2017) with critical place-based pedagogy (Gruenewald, 2003; Graham, 2009; Love & Randolph, 2012; Love & Randolph 2013) for inclusive museum and visitor-centered exhibition development. Articulated as place narratives the combined theory and pedagogical framework ensures that voices and cultures of contemporary women artists—in this exhibition artists who work through the medium of textiles—activate exhibition spaces through visitor interaction and socially engaged understandings of how place narratives inform artistic creation. Exhibition development shares similar steps with social reconstructionist pedagogy aimed at igniting change through socially engaged activities. Likewise, feminist systems thinking theory aims to include voices from the margins to encourage change through inclusive and empowering research methods and strategies. Textiles, often created by women and reinforcing powerful place-based narratives that challenge notions of art and craft, offer the opportunity to reexamine assumptions, while stimulating and empowering future generations of artists and viewers. The artists included in this study and exhibition planning represent place narratives from the Southeastern United States, a challenging yet provoking environment for confronting historical, ecological, sociopolitical, phenomenological, and ideological change. The researchers present the curatorial framework as demonstrated through the early stages of exhibition development focused on application of the framework through an actual exhibition planning process. Session attendees are encouraged to apply or adapt the framework to their own place narratives for inclusive, visitor-centered practices in their museums.
