The Feminist Legacy in Art Museums (FLAME)
The Feminist Legacy in Art Museums
© 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
Ulla Angkjær-Jørgensen was interviewed about FLAME to ArtScene Trondheim.
We are the guest editors 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.
One article is in English. Charis Gullickson discusses the National Museum's sponsor strategies in a feminist perspective.
Forthcoming events
Publications and previous events
- 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.
FLAME hostet 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.
People in Flame
Associate professor Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen (NTNU) is project leader and associate professor Sigrun Åsebø (UiB) is co-project leader. Together with PhD-students Pernille Zidore Nygaard (NTNU) and Katrine Annesdatter-Madsen (UiB) they form the core research group. Associate professor Frida Forsgren (UiA) and independent researcher Jorunn Veiteberg are connected researchers.
The Feminist Legacy in Art Museums research project has national and international connections to people and networks in academe and in art museums. We are closely connected with the Danish project Feminist Emergency: Women Artists in Denmark, 1960 to the present, University of Copenhagen.
We are also connected to art museums in Norway and Nordic museums through the network Gender and Diversity in Nordic Art Museums.
Griselda Pollock (University of Leeds, UK), Katy Deepwell (Middelsex University, UK), Fabienne Dumont (EESAB École européenne supérieure d’art de Bretagne, FR), Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe (Stockholm University, SE), Katarina Wadstein Macleod (Södertörn University, SE), Malene Vest Hansen (University of Copenhagen), Stina Høgkvist (The National Museum, NO), Birgitte Anderberg (National Gallery of Denmark), Julie Rokkjær Birch (KØN Gender Museum Denmark), are all international and national collaborators of the project.
1 March 2021, Pernille Zidore Nygaard began her three-year PhD fellowship. The title of her project is «Tracing Gendered Patterns in Collecting: A feminist intervention in five major public collections in Norway». She is based in Trondheim.
1 September 2021, Katrine Annesdatter-Madsen began her three-year PhD fellowship. The title of her project is «The event as performative renegotiation of the female body and woman's cultural-historical representation in Norwegian feminist art in the 1970s - feminist readings of the haptic strategies of Sidsel Paaske, Siri Aurdal and Zdenka Rusova.» She is based in Bergen.
Jorunn Veiteberg
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
