{"id":19514,"date":"2020-03-05T12:50:26","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T12:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/?p=19514"},"modified":"2020-09-02T12:47:57","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T12:47:57","slug":"transforming-the-gaze-to-transform-museographical-discourses-women-artists-in-the-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/transforming-the-gaze-to-transform-museographical-discourses-women-artists-in-the-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Transforming the Gaze to Transform Museographical Discourses: Women Artists in the Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ingrid Vidal<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mari<\/a>
Mari Chord\u00e0<\/a>. Pregnant self-portrait<\/a><\/em>  (1966-1967). Museu Nacional d\u2019Art de Catalunya. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These days more and more museums are re-examining\ntheir discourses and rescuing works by women artists from the basements. To\nmark International Women\u2019s Day we propose to take a look at some of the ideas that\nwere crucial to, on the one hand, the\nbirth of museums<\/strong> and, on the other, to the discrimination of women artists in the hegemonic historiographical\nnarrative<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\nhave to turn our gaze towards the enlightened ideals that prevailed \u2013 about\nknowledge, education, the family and the role of women in the State \u2013 to see\nhow deeply rooted certain prejudices <\/strong>were, concerning art, women \u2013 artists or not \u2013 and the functions of the\nmuseum<\/strong>. Doubt has been cast on the legitimacy of this imaginary, and\none sign of it is the re-examination of the\nmuseographical narratives that put forward feminist perspectives. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The desire for classification in the 18th<\/sup> century: the origin of museums<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Enlightenment<\/a> was a philosophical movement that held sway in Europe from the mid 18th<\/sup> to the early 19th<\/sup> century; particularly active in France, Germany and Great Britain, it focused on the problem of knowledge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enlightened thinking banished the ideas of a mysterious nature governed by divine laws and ushered in the vocabulary promoted by French rationalism<\/a> and British empiricism<\/a>. With the formulation of \u2018natural laws\u2019 people sensed that if they could learn how nature works, they could also predict and even master it; the thinking was that society is governed by analogous laws and that the conduct of individuals can be controlled through education<\/strong>. An idea popular in that period is that artistic perception and taste both depend on the education one has been given.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This desire to rationalize the world was conducive to the appearance of Denis Diderot<\/a> and J. B. D’Alembert<\/a>\u2019s Encyclopaedia<\/a><\/em>, often seen as the materialization of the desire for classification in the 18th<\/sup> century. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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