This strange flower….Changing the past and imagining feminist futures:

Letters between a museum curator and an artist

Authors

  • Thale Blix Fastvold
  • Hilde Herming

Abstract

Through a series of letters written in summer 2023 between Hilde Herming, manager of the Women’s Museum Norway, and artist Thale Blix Fastvold, we explore in this article how we collaborated to imagine more feminist futures for the museum. With reference to a variety of the artists’ feminist projects, concepts, and investigative practices we explored how to bring new perspectives to the museum to change the patriarchal structures which continue to dominate both society and its institutions. As the Women’s Museum Norway is based in the childhood home of Dagny Juel (1867 – 1901), we illustrate how she became a pivotal figure, a third voice in our explorations. We argue that writing for us built bridges across our different positions as manger and artist in the interests of gender justice and provides a new model of how museums can become safe platforms and facilitators of and for feminist adult education.

Author Biographies

Thale Blix Fastvold

Thale Blix Fastvold is a Norwegian visual artist working primarily with photography, film and performance art. She has a BA in photography from Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome, and a Cand.mag (MA) in Art History and Literature from the University of Oslo. She is currently the Chair of Forbundet Frie Fotografer (Norwegian Association of Camera-based Artists)

Hilde Herming

Hilde Herming, is a film and media graduate from the University of Stirling, Scotland, and the University of Oslo, where she specialized in film from feminist and postcolonial perspectives. She is the initiator and editor of the ongoing project and book Fast Plass – Norwegian Women on Plinths (2017) and until August 2023 was the manager of the Women’s Museum in Norway.

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Published

2024-05-10

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 1 (2024): Feminist Adult Education, Museums, Heritage Sites & Exhibitory Praxis

Section

Articles

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