Women's Museums Across Borders

The European Women's Museums

The Women's Museum in Bonn has been the co-ordinating office for the network 'womeninmuseum' for Europe. On the following pages we will give you an overview of the European Women's Museums. (as of late 2009)

Year of Foundation

The 1980s saw the first ‚founding wave. The first Women's Museum to go by that name was the one in Bonn. It opened in 1981. Already a year later the second one was being founded in Aarhus (Denmark), the 'frauenmuseum wiesbaden' followed in 1984, in 1986 it was the ‚Verborgene Museum' (Hidden Museum') in Berlin and in  1988 Evelyn Ortner laid the foundation for her Women's Museum in Merano (Italy). The mid-1990s saw the opening of a mobile museum called 'Gynaika' in Antwerp (Belgium) as a mobile museum as well as the Women's Museums at Kongsvinger (Norway) and Skellefteå (Sweden). Seven more Women's Museums have been founded since the year 2000, and furthermore there are four initiatives that plan on opening more museums.

Founders

The founders of the 1980s were, with the exception of Evelyn Ortner, women's groups working interdisciplinarily coming from the New Women's Liberation Movement. Later on, the foundation would be taken on mostly by singular women. The start-up phase almost always went along with great amounts of voluntary work in order to find recognition and support.
The museum in Sweden takes a special position whose foundation had been agreed on by the city council at Skellefteå. The case of the museum in Hittisau (Austria) is also interesting, since there it was the curator Ms Elisabeth Stöcker who developed a concept for a new community centre by appointment of the district council. This concept contained the constitution of a women's museum, which was approved by the district council. Apart from this particular case, the establishment of a new museum has always been a very long-winded and labour-intensive project, sometimes taking up many years.

Objective

All Women's museums were founded out of a certain shortcoming. One fundamental goal of most of these institutions is the research and making visible of female history and of women's cultural heritage, as well as promotion of female culture. Partially they formulate it as their challenge to increase awareness for female and gender-related questions and to contribute to an egalitarian society. These goals should mainly be met through exhibitions and education. Some Women's museums also see their function in developing new artistic quality connotations and creative means of expression as well as breaking up the current borders women were facing in art. The 'Museum Frauenkultur Regional International' from Fürth, however, is based on an intercultural concept and has the object promoting peaceful co-habitation in our multicultural society.

Main Focus

The ‚Hidden Museum' in Berlin, the  ‚FemArtMuseum' in Amsterdam, ‚Gynaika' in Antwerp and the ‚Museum Anna Nordlander' in Skellefteå are purely dedicated to art. All other museums concentrate on female history and female culture, and some of them change between art and historical exhibitions. As a special feature, the ‚frauenmuseum wiesbaden' has its main focus on the topic of archaeology and city history, the ‚Museum Frauenkultur' in Fürth takes an  intercultural, ethnological approach, the Women's Museum Bonn combines historical and socio-political exhibitions with contemporary art, where female artists create a work of art connected with a particular topic.

Locations

Most Women's Museums begin their projects without having access to any fixed space; some even start up as mobile museums. When choosing a location all possibilities are open, and the museums are required to be flexible. The Women's Museum Bonn started out by seizing an empty former department store, the Danish Women's Museum captured the former city hall at Aarhus, and the Norwegian Women's Museum resides in a beautiful country villa where a well-known artist had grown up. The ‚frauenmuseum wiesbaden' found its quarters in an old factory, the ‚Museum Frauenkultur' did the same in the non-heated Stables at Fürth, and the Women's Museum of Merano will move into a former convent in 2010.
The Museum of Roma women is set in authentic surroundings, namely inside caves in the traditional gypsy district in Granada, Spain. The Women's Museums of Austria and Sweden have prestigious new buildings.
As different as the locations may be, so is the size of the exhibitions rooms. The 'Hidden Museum' is, in fact, located on one floor of a residential building in a back yard and has to make do with less than 100 sq. m. Most Women's Museums have a few hundred square metres at their disposal, the Norwegian one has 900 sq. m, the Danish one expanded step by step to 2,220 sq. m and the one at Bonn boasts 3,000 sq. m due to the size of the former department store.

Governing Bodies

The three Women's Museums in Sweden, Denmark and Austria are the only municipal establishments. The virtual project ‚MUSEA' is associated with the University of Angers (France). All other Women's Museums are governed by an independent foundation, a registered society, or a Women's association.

Funding

Only part of the sources comes from state and municipal funds. The Norwegian and the Swedish Women's Museums are the only ones financed exclusively with public funds. The Danish Women's Museum, apart from municipal and state funding, also claims money from a private foundation. The museum at Austria receives funds from the district as well as the federal state, as does the one at Merano from the district and the state of South Tyrol, Gynaika from the Flemish government, the Museum of Roma women from the city council of Granada. Almost all museums are forced to find monies elsewhere. The German women's museums receive mostly only basic financing from the city councils towards rent and, sometimes, one fully-funded job. Normally, there is no budget to go towards exhibitions, so that these costs have to be covered additionally. The Ukrainian Women's and Gender Museum, which is currently being set up, and the initiative 'FemArtMuseum' at Amsterdam received some initial funding from women's foundations; the university project MUSEA received funds from the European Social Fund. However, financing is often inadequate. Many women's museums are still struggling to survive.

Staff

The number of full-time female staff is very low, apart from very few exceptions. Mostly there are only one or two posts. The Norwegian Women's Museum is much better equipped with eight full- and part-time posts in total. Thanks to an innovative job policy the Danish Women's Museum has a staff of 20, with three curators amongst them. On the flip side, the Museum Women's Culture at Fürth has no paid posts at all - all women work voluntarily and unpaid, each according to her capacities. The museum project at Ukraine has no prospects yet either, since the temporary posts expired in late 2009.
All women's museums do important socio-political work which is hard to manage with the low number of paid posts. Except for in the Scandinavian countries, you will find volunteers everywhere, in order to get the job done. Many museums employ temporary staff, depending on their projects. At the Bonn Women's Museum we employ several permanent free staff, the fees for whom have to be generated.

Exhibitions

Only the four Women's Museums in Norway, Denmark, South Tyrol and Spain are showing permanent exhibitions. The Ukrainian Women's and Gender Museum has an exhibition split in eight different parts which it would like to show on a permanent basis, however there is no own space. All other women's museums have decided to show changing exhibitions several times a year rather than one permanent one. Some of these houses are able to show up to ten changing exhibitions within one year, most of them do two to three. Most of the museums produce catalogues for these exhibitions.

Collections

Some of the women's museums have no collection of their own or only collect on a limited basis. While the already completed collection at Merano was the reason to found the museum in the first place, other museums view collecting as a secondary task. The Ukrainian project, however, puts the collection of objects first, since there is no other institutions in the country that document women's history. The Ukrainian museum has found an important field of work in restoring old and badly-conserved images of women in order to be able to illustrate women's history.

Virtual Exhibitions

Apart from the physically existing women's museums there are several virtual projects illustrating women's history. The University of Angers founded the internet museum MUSEA back in 2004 in order to make available scientific studies concerning women and gender issues by way of internet exhibitions to the general public. Visitors are encouraged to leave their feedback via the website. The web mistress had previously attempted to found a 'real' women's museum. Since she was not successful initially, the virtual project is replacing the women's museum in at least a few areas.
A second, self-contained internet project, is called 'MuSheum', founded by the Equal Opportunities Office at Vienna. It contains contents of the collections of four real Vienna Museums. Illustrations and objects of these collections are shown on the website and brought into a gender-specific context, in order to critically question the traditional interpretations and encourage new ones.

Women's or Gender-Related Museums

A further new development clarifies that the concept of a women's museum is being expanded slowly: the first institutions of their kind called themselves Women's And Gender-Related Museums; and there are a few exhibition parts at the Ukrainian museum that are directed specifically towards male visitors. The Ukrainian museum had a male member of staff working alongside the female temporarily employed volunteers. The Museum Anna Nordlander in Sweden has defined one of its goals as broaching the issues of gender-related circumstances in the arts.
Interestingly, the only male participant to attend the network meeting came from Sweden. Furthermore, the Norwegian women's museum employs two male members of staff.

Initiatives For New Foundations

Several women or women's groups are working together in order to found new women's museums in their respective countries. One of these women is Martha Beéry from Switzerland. Up to now, she has not been able to find support, nor adequate space, nor proper funding for her project. Elsa Ballauri, however, has encountered interest with public authorities, potential sponsors and foreign embassies for her project of an Albanian women's museum. In early 2010 a group of women have arranged the museum, which opened in May of 2010, at a private residence. The Museo Donne del Mediterraneo 'Calmana' in Naples, which was initiated by Genoveffa Palumbo, does not as yet have rooms nor exhibitions, however they have done a lot of research and have also held seminars concerning the topic of 'Museums and Gender'. Freda Dröes from Amsterdam had initial success with her planned ‚FemArtMuseum'. She was able to win over a number of sponsors donating money or paintings as soon as a proper space can be located for the project.

Homepages

We invite you to discover more about the women's museums! Feel free to visit us for real or on the internet. (See links to women's museums.)
Find more information on the website of the network 'womeninmuseum' (www.womeninmuseum.net).