‘Hidden from view’?: an analysis of the integration of women’s history and women’s voices into Australia’s social history exhibitions

The Feminist Museum Hack as an aesthetic practice of possibility

“…Representations do not simply disseminate knowledge, they actively construct it. For Hall (2013), representation is the most powerful discursive pedagogical force we have today due to its extraordinary ability to cement and naturalise notions of common sense and "truth" as well as fix identity -our sense of not only ourselves but also, "the other" (Cramer et al, 2018;Gordon-Walker, 2018;Hall 2013).…”

“…Together, these pedagogical elements are what Whitehead (2009) calls "practices of representation" -amalgamations of artworks, images, displays, artefacts, dioramas, stage crafting (positioning) and explanatory texts specifically designed to shape knowledge and understandings of everything from innovation to history, culture to science. Hall (2013) and Cramer and Witcomb (2018) add that museum and art gallery representations also shape identity --who we were, 'who we are and who we should be' (Hall, 2013, p. 127). While visitors can (and do) interpret different meanings from the representations they encounter, the authoritative aura of the scripto-visuals, what Steeds (2014) calls 'plays of force', both consciously and unconsciously influence what we see and therefore, assume to be "true" in terms of culture, society, ourselves, and "the other" (e.g.…”

“…Over decades, feminist studies have shown the patriarchal nature of museum and art gallery representations, a powerful "epistemology of mastery" that places men at the centre of the world's storythose who matter -and women and others at its periphery -those who do not. Not seeing oneself at all, or consistently as lesser, has an impact on both subjectivity and one's sense of agency (Bergsdóttir, 2016;Cramer & Witcomb, 2018;Code, 2003;English & Irving, 2015;Macedo, 2015;Pollock, 1988). This is what Ulrich and Raza (2015) would call an "unsatisfying condition" with profoundly negative implications.…”

Animating ‘The Blank Page’: Exhibitions as Feminist Community Adult Education

“…In other words, what we see, and the setting of that seeing, such as the authoritative trusted context of a museum or art gallery, together play a constitutive role in forging what we see and know to be reality (Bergsdóttir 2016). Although Porter (1991) rightly challenges the image of the adult visitor as simply 'a passive recipient of [its'] authoritarian discourse' (p. 105), scholars, such as Mirzoeff (2013), Hall et al (2013), Whitehead (2009) and Cramer and Witcomb (2018) point to the power of exhibition 'visualising technologies', coupled with museum disciplinary power, to encourage visitors to 'see what they are being taught to see' (Cramer and Witcomb 2018, p. 2). What is being argued here is that like community adult education, exhibitions are never impartial, objective windows onto the world.…”

“…My own reflections take me to museum and art gallery exhibitions that have for centuries worked as mediums of 'the blank page', vehicles to stereotype, objectivise, trivialise or silence women at 'the less discernible outer rims' of the world's canvas (Bergsdóttir 2016, p. 128). More recently, however, feminists have begun to curate diverse types of exhibitions to revise and trouble this politics of mis-representation, parody and obliteration and animate change (e.g., Bartlett 2016;Best 2016;Cramer and Witcomb 2018;Fletcher 2008). This constitutes what adult educator Belenky et al (1997, p. 4) called 'the roar which lies on the other side of silence' yet there are relatively few studies of feminist exhibitions and none to date have explored them as feminist community adult education.…”