What is a feminist exhibition? Considering<i>Contemporary Australia: Women</i>

Best, Susan

doi:10.1080/14443058.2016.1154588

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Scholars writing about contemporary feminist exhibitions provide important points of analysis that are in fact central tenants of feminist community adult education. For example, coming from different angles Bartlett (2016), Best (2016) and Fletcher (2008) outline what it means for an exhibition to be feminist. To be feminist an exhibition must be an activist and praxis-orientated vehicle that gives women's stories centre stage.…”

Section: Feminism and Community Adult Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To be feminist an exhibition must be an activist and praxis-orientated vehicle that gives women's stories centre stage. It must situate women contextually, that is within historical moments that have shaped their lives (Best 2016). Whilst celebration of women's accomplishments and acts of remembrance are important, feminist exhibitions will address structural inequalities, as these are what most impede the process of gender justice and change.…”

Section: Feminism and Community Adult Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

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

Clover

2018

Social Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Public museums and art galleries in Canada are highly authoritative, and trusted knowledge and identity mobilising institutions, whose exhibitions are frequently a ‘blank page’ of erasure, silencing, and marginalisation, in terms of women’s histories, experiences, and contributions. Feminist exhibitions are a response to this, but few in Canada have been explored as practices of feminist community adult education. I begin to address this gap with an analysis of two feminist exhibitions: In Defiance: Indigenous Women Define Themselves, curated by Mohawk-Iroquois artist, Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde, at the Legacy Gallery, University of Victoria; and Fashion Victims: The Pleasures & Perils of Dress in the 19th Century, curated by Ryerson Professor Alison Matthews David, at the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto. Although dissimilar in form, focus, and era, these exhibitions act as powerful intentional pedagogical processes of disruption and reclamation, using images and storytelling to animate, re-write and reimagine the ‘blank pages’ of particular and particularised histories and identities. Through the centrality of women’s bodies and practices of violence, victimization, and women’s power, these exhibitions encourage the feminist oppositional imagination, dialogic looking, gender consciousness, and a visual literacy of hope and possibility. Yet, as women’s stories become audible through the very representational vehicles and institutional spaces used to silence them, challenges remain.

show abstract

Section: Feminism and Community Adult Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Feminism and Community Adult Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%