The Feminist Legacy in Art Museums (FLAME)
The Feminist Legacy in Art Museums (2020-2026)
© Gitte Dæhlin / BONO 2020. Courtesy of Kunstmuseet NordTrøndelag. Photo: Yvonne Helen Antonsen. Selskapsdame was made for the first Norwegian feminist exhibition Kvinner – kunst – kamp (Women – Art – Struggle) in Bergen in 1975. The exhibition was curated by Helga Norland, Therese Christensen, Gitte Dæhlin, and Elisabeth Haarr.
Why are art museums still lagging behind when it comes to collecting and representing art made by women? What are the frameworks for building collections today, and how are they rooted in storytelling and ideology? And not least, how can we make space for women’s art and culture?
These are questions we ask ourselves in the research project The Feminist Legacy in Art Museums. Museums’ inability to provide space for women as actors and cultural producers in both the present and the past is a democratic problem and a deficiency in museums as managers of cultural heritage.
We argue that the lack of attention paid to and research on art made by women in art museums and in collections is connected to a general lack of recognition of the feminist project in art history. We shall conduct empirical studies of the feminist avant-garde in the 1970s, its forms of exhibition and social spaces, and examine the institution’s ways of collecting and representing art.
News
Sigrun Åsebø & Ulla Angkjær presented the paper «Taking a Feminist Look at the Museum. Example of the Norwegian Project 'The Feminist Legacy in Art Museums'» for the French online seminar Musées et féminismes, organised by Christine Bard, Julie Botte, Damien Hamard and Julie Verlaine (15 December 2023).
Ulla Angkjær participated in the workshop The Museum and the Avant-Garde at Aarhus University with the paper «Thoughts on missing traditions in art history: feminist and Sámi art in the nre Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo» (9-10 November 2023).
Sigrun Åsebø was interviewed for Kilden's News Magazine (genderresearch.no) (24 October 2023). Read the interview «Fortellingene om kvinner og kvinners kamp mangler i museene» (Narratives about women and women's struggle are missing in museums).
Sigrun Åsebø & Ulla Angkjær were interviewed for the journal Museum (18 October 2023). Read the interview «Kvinner har vært der hele tiden» (Women have always been there).
FLAME organized an open seminar in Trondheim 20 September 2023 under the heading Feminist history and historiography, and cultural heritage, the seventies. Follow this link to download the programme.
FLAME has a new sister project called Museums and Textiles in Trondheim (MUTE). It is a collaboration between NTNU, UiB and MiST - Museene i Sør-Trøndelag. You can read more about MUTE on the museum's website.
Sigrun Åsebø published «Feministiske kunstmøter: å lese kvinner inn i kunstens historier» (Feminist art encounters: to read women into the history of art), Kunst og Kultur (June 2023).
Project leader
Co-project leader
Sigrun Åsebø
Associate Professor
+47-416 83 977
Sigrun.Asebo@uib.no
Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen
Previous events
FLAME hosts the PhD course Meshes of the Archive. Gender, Diversity, Archives and Cultural Heritage at Centre Universitaire de Norvège à Paris / Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 22-24 March 2022.
Åsebø and Angkjær participated in the conference Fast Forward! Women in European Art, 1960s - Present. Organised by the project Feminist Emergency: Women Artists in Denmark, 1960- present, the conference was hosted by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 17-18 November 2021.
Åsebø and Angkjær participated in the conference Gender, power and disempowerment. The XII Nordic Women's and Gender History Conference. Aarhus University hosted the conference, 19-21 August 2021.
FLAME organised the conference Stofflighetens politikk: Om kjønnsrepresentasjon, tekstil og materialbasert kunst i norske samlinger. The University of Bergen and KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes hosted the event, 1-2 June, 2021.
Åsebø and Angkjær participated in a webseminar on Professor Griselda Pollock's influential work in Feminism and Art History on the occasion of her recieving the Holberg Prize 2020. University of Bergen hosted the seminar, 22 February 2021.
Åsebø participated in a panel on Feminism in Art at Festspillene i Nord-Norge, October 2020.
Publications
FLAME guest editor of Kunst og Kultur (June 2022). Find our editorial on collections, exhibitions, and gender here (in Norwegian language). Articles by Frida Forsgren, Solveig Lønmo, and Pernille Zidore Nygaard.
Interview with Ulla Angkjær-Jørgensen and Märit Aronsson-Towler in ArtScene Trondheim, 16 December 2022.
Interview with Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen in Susanne Diedrichson, «Maihaugen Museum viser frem kvinnehistorie fra Gudbrandsdalen». Kilden, 17 December 2020.
Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen and Sigrun Åsebø, «Hvorfor telle kvinner i kunstmuseet?», Bergens Tidende, 30 November 2020.
Interview with Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen and Sigrun Åsebø in Anne-Mari Gregersen, «Overrasket over kvalitetsdiskusjonen». Museumsnytt, 26 November 2020.