Chapter 10 Courage and Passion and World War Women
Interpreting Two Exhibitions on Women in Canada’s National Museums
In: Feminist Critique and the MuseumSearch for other papers by Jennifer Thivierge in
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Abstract
Within the last decade, Canada’s national museums have endeavoured to deliver exhibitions that have a concentrated focus on women. More recently, two of Canada’s national museums launched temporary exhibitions which centred on women’s personal and professional experiences. This approach represented women’s experiences as individual and unique without juxtaposing their relationship, attachment and involvement alongside men. In these exhibitions, women’s voices, accomplishments and struggles were the intended messages, yet the output from the two museums was entirely distinct and diverse as two separate exhibits. This chapter will focus on Courage and Passion an exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Nature and World War Women at Canada’s War Museum both located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada’s capital. It will use Reilly’s “curatorial activism” to explore these two temporary exhibits which will reveal two contrasting topics which view women’s perspectives and participation in science and war. The ways in which the exhibitions engaged or (dis)engaged the visitor as a process of examination, exploration and discussion on the representation and occupation of women in museum spaces.