Women’s Museums from All Over World Meet in İstanbul

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Women’s Museum: Social Memory Center and Inclusionary Venue – International Women Museums Conference is being organized by collaborative work of İstanbul Women’s Museum and İstanbul Bilgi University, Communication Faculty from October 20-22, 2016 in İstanbul.

Women museums’ impact in social change during 21st century will be discussed in the conference with the participation of women museum directors, curators, academics, activists and women organizations.

One woman museum from Denmark, Japan, Austria, Italy, Turkey and Sweden, two women museums from Germany, the United States will be represented by their curators and managers.

How society’s excluded individuals and communities are integrated within cultural representation and how cultural participation and visibility of the ignored ones are ensured will be exemplified in the sessions in which these museums’ working strategies that create opinion and action discourses will be discussed.

In addition to presentations, panels and workshops, the introductory films of the participant museums will be screened.

Women’s museums

Interpretation of history and women’s history through the glasses of feminist women studies and feminist history studies has led the way to women museums.

In opposition to traditional museology understanding that makes women history invisible and present women as an object in museum, women producing alternatives have started to make women visible in museums in 1980s.

“Women’s museum” term was firstly used with Frauenmuseum opened in Bonn in 1981. Nowadays, there are over 70 women’s museums all over the world.

Women museums emphasize the impacts of political, economic and cultural factors on women’s daily lives, keep women history on the agenda, make today’s women’s lives visible and carry the social gender equality debates to the museums. (NV/TK)

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