Museums have no borders,
they have a network
March 31, 2025
Marie Cocault
second-year Master’s degree student in Museums and New Media at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, specialising in the management of cultural projects and organisations
In early 2023, plans were announced to open a Museum of Feminisms in Angers, France within the next few years. Initially planned for 2027, the opening has now been pushed to 2030, with no guarantee that the project will actually materialise. This article, which examines issues related to both feminism and museums, offers a look at the Museum of Feminisms project along with other initiatives to create a feminist museum in France over the past 25 years and the obstacles they have faced.
The social and political role of the museum
While the social role of museums was recognised as early as the 1930s, the question of gender in museums was slow to elicit interest. Feminist thinking took hold first, notably through the concept of the “canon” (Nochlin 1971; Pollock 1981). Nochlin and Pollock argued against the essentialist vision of trying to neutralise a male canon with a female canon, which they said would simply reinforce intrinsic gender distinctions (Dumont and Sofio 2007). The link between museums and gender was only established in the 1990s, with a new reading of “the history of museums, museology and museography through the lens of gender” (Foucher-Zarmanian 2018). The focus thus shifted to a more holistic approach of examining the way in which museums reflect larger power dynamics and actively participate in the construction and transmission of gender norms.
In the 1990s, Jean Davallon reflected on the categorisation of the museum as a form of media (Davallon, 1992). The exhibition, which is intended to be a communication tool for “establishing a relationship with objects or knowledge”, and the accompanying techniques embody the “technology” of the museum. It is the relationship with objects and knowledge that enables us to understand the extent to which the museum can be considered a form of media, however, media “now more than ever, participate in the process of gendered socialisation” (Biscarrat and Espineira, 2014).
Women in museums
The advent of temporary exhibitions about women represents a historic milestone, and such exhibitions are flourishing in many museums (museums of history, art, ethnography, etc.). However, a number of elements around these exhibitions raise questions. For example, the themes of temporary exhibitions can sometimes clash with the museum’s internal workings, creating a discrepancy between the theme of a museum’s exhibition and its working conditions, which can be questionable not only in terms of gender (Musé.e.s 2022) but also in terms of how the collection is treated. Do the acquisitions and displays reflect the interest that museums claim to have in feminist issues? We need to be vigilant and ask ourselves whether museums are not just putting on a façade with temporary exhibitions and the communications developed around them. An interest in works by women must be reflected in the museum’s collections, mediation, working conditions, etc. A two-tier level of interest could be called ‘feminism washing’, defined as “the way in which, in their communications, companies and organisations claim to be concerned with equality for commercial or image purposes, even though they do not respect those values within their own team” (HF+ Bretagne 2023).
A network of women’s museums
Women’s museums have emerged independently, often without any knowledge of each other. They have chosen to develop on the fringes of “traditional” museums and aim to create a “niche” devoted solely to the cultures, stories and art of women from all eras. Today, the International Association of Women’s Museums has 60 member museums worldwide (IAWM 2023), making it a large-scale network with members pursuing common objectives. The IAWM has participated in the development of a number of exhibitions in collaboration with its partners, beginning with physical exhibitions designed for specific locations or intended to travel.
Women’s museums versus feminist museums
Women’s museums are the subject of debate in feminist circles because of their potentially essentialist message. In the glossary of its Guide pour un musée féministe [Guide for a Feminist Museum], the Musé.e.s association defines the term “essentialism” as “A school of thought according to which certain qualities and behaviours are specific to women and others are specific to men.” (Musé.e.s 2022). The potentially essentialist nature of women’s museums makes it necessary to clearly distinguish between women’s museums and feminist museums. While these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, it is important to bear in mind that, depending on its discourse, a women’s museum may not necessarily be a feminist museum.
Research questions
Feminist studies is a field of research that has become very dynamic in recent decades, as museums have produced events (though always on the fringes) about women and their history and sometimes even about feminists. Feminist struggles have led to changes in museum practices, so it is worth asking why there is no place entirely dedicated to these issues in France. Why is it that in a country with over 1,200 museums, not one of them is dedicated to women or feminism? How is it that the international interest in this type of museum seems to have escaped France? These are the questions that led this article to look at the different feminist museum projects developed over the last 25 years in France, in order to take stock of those that led to the creation of the forthcoming Museum of Feminisms, due to open in Angers in 2030.
This article is based in part on documents from the collections of the main feminist archives in France: La Contemporaine, the Marguerite Durand Library, the Simone de Beauvoir Audiovisual Centre and the Centre des Archives du Féminisme (CAF). These are the only institutional spaces in France wholly or partially devoted to feminist issues.
This article is also based on five semi-structured interviews conducted with Julie Botte[1], PhD in museology, aesthetics and art sciences; Christine Bard, historian, president of the Archives du Féminisme association and head of the women’s and gender history museum known as MUSEA; Magali Lafourcade, PhD in comparative law; Nicole Pellegrin, modernist historian and anthropologist; and France Chabod, librarian in charge of the Centre des Archives du Féminisme. Oral accounts are an important source of data in this area, as the written sources documenting the projects mentioned below are incomplete.
Despite the interest shown by the scientific community and the general public in feminist issues across all disciplines, and despite the emergence of an international network of women’s museums over the last few decades, France still has no women’s museum or museum dedicated to feminism. However, several projects have emerged over the last 25 years. The aim of this article is to understand who was behind these initiatives, their ambitions and ideas, and the reasons why some of those projects did not come to fruition.
Cité des Femmes
Cité des Femmes [City of Women] is an association that emerged in 2001 with the aim of “developing a project to create a space dedicated to the history of women and gender, including a museum; seeking out the resources to implement the project; and, while awaiting its creation, accepting donations and bequests for the museum’s permanent collections” (Cité des Femmes 2002). Although the initiative, which began with Christine Bard, was the first project aimed at creating a feminist museum in France, it came particularly late in history. “There could have been projects before, but there weren’t any, to my knowledge. Cité des Femmes was the first association to have a museum project, or a feminist museum project” (interview with Christine Bard, 2024).
The political and social context was at the time favourable to the Cité des Femmes project. As the idea for such a space was in line with movements that had emerged in previous decades, the creation of the Cité des Femmes would have helped to consolidate hard-won advances and legitimise the feminist struggle in the eyes of a sometimes-reticent public. In any case, it would at least have helped limit a dangerous step backwards (Pellegrin 2024).
The project was supported by the City of Paris from the outset. Anne Hidalgo, then deputy mayor in charge of gender equality, “warmly [expressed] her interest at a Women’s Day preparatory meeting at Paris City Hall on 9 October 2001” (Cité des Femmes 2002). The project was announced to the public by Bertrand Delanoë, then mayor of Paris. The deputy director of the French Museum Service at the time was also part of the project (interview with Christine Bard, 2024). However, the City of Paris made no statement regarding the termination of the Cité des Femmes project. The members of the association “noted the failure” and “ended up dissolving the association” (interview with Christine Bard, 2024). Nicole Pellegrin questions Anne Hidalgo’s objectives, wondering in particular whether they “were political, at least in the short term, as is the case for many politicians, since it would not pay off for her…” (Pellegrin 2024). Christine Bard deplores the lack of political support. “There was not enough political support. The City of Paris took on the project and then abandoned it” (interview with Christine Bard, 2024). The difficulty in accessing records and documentation on the Cité des Femmes project only serves to reinforce these suspicions.
MUSEA
The disappointment of the members of the Cité des Femmes association was an impetus for some to invest in a project for a virtual museum of women and gender, known as MUSEA. Although the project had already been envisaged when the scientific and cultural plans were drawn up for the Cité des Femmes (Bard and Trumel 2002), and in late 2002, Christine Bard stated that she shared the ambition to make this “cyber-museum […] the forerunner of the future space for the Cité des Femmes” (Cité des Femmes 2002), MUSEA really only emerged after the Cité des Femmes project was abandoned. Although very different from the Cité des Femmes, MUSEA shares a number of the same objectives, in particular providing access to information tailored to a variety of audiences. MUSEA has been online since 2004.
La Cité Audacieuse
La Cité Audacieuse, created by the Fondation des Femmes, is an “activist café” with cultural programming revolving around women’s issues that hosts and organises conferences, workshops and exhibitions. Above the café are offices housing around 50 feminist associations. The Fondation des Femmes describes the space as an “ecosystem of associations”.
The link between La Cité Audacieuse and Cité des Femmes remains unclear. Although the projects have little in common, members of the Fondation des Femmes and La Cité Audacieuse say La Cité Audacieuse is the culmination of the Cité des Femmes project. However, neither the City of Paris, the French Museum Service, nor the Fondation des Femmes could provide any reliable information on the subject. Even worse, they contradicted one another; the City of Paris and the Fondation des Femmes claimed in email exchanges that Cité des Femmes is the same project as La Cité Audacieuse opened by the Fondation des Femmes in March 2020. Christine Bard, who was behind the original project, claimed the opposite. Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette, in charge of promoting La Cité Audacieuse on behalf of the Fondation des Femmes, said that the idea for this ‘Cité des Femmes’ is several years old but would become a reality soon. “It was the former mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, who talked about it first. Eventually, Anne Hidalgo took up the idea and officially announced it at the end of last year. It is now a priority for the mayor of Paris and should come to fruition fairly soon” (Pierre-Brossolette, Tardy-Joubert 2019).
This vagueness, compounded by the termination of the Cité des Femmes project, is only heightened by the absence of records at the Paris City Hall and documents on La Cité Audacieuse and raises questions about the institutional willingness to genuinely commit to a feminist project.
Museum of Feminisms
With a growing number of requests to visit the Centre des Archives du Féminisme, the centre had to find a venue that was better suited to displaying its collections. Renovations of the Belle Beille university library in Angers offered the possibility of a new space and the creation of a Museum of Feminisms to embody the plurality and variety of feminist movements that have existed in France and the wealth of feminist research in recent years (Bard and Mauduit, 2023). Technical and intellectual progress and achievements make the establishment of such a centre now more relevant than ever (Pellegrin, 2024). Christine Bard believes that even though the project was necessary 20 years ago, it is even more so after the #MeToo era. Today, “there is a feminist upheaval just about everywhere, which has also become institutionalised, and there are equality policies in universities”. The current era is ripe for “universities to fully take on their cultural role and for all the research being done on women and feminism to have an outlet in a museum” (interview with Christine Bard, 2024).
AFéMuse, the Association for a Museum of Feminisms, was established to support the creation of the museum. The French government has expressed its support for AFéMuse and included the museum project in its Interministerial Plan for Gender Equality (2023-2027).
The search for funding is time-consuming, and AFéMuse members meet once a week to discuss the matter. Even though the project was announced and the government announced its support for it on 8 March 2023, obtaining public funding remains difficult. “The museum was announced as part of the Interministerial Plan for Gender Equality, so we thought the museum could be created with public funds. But now we are trying to get those public funds and it’s a different kettle of fish” (interview with Christine Bard 2024). Christine Bard is also concerned about the government’s budget cuts announced in February 2024: “Now I am less sure that the museum will be created as we imagined it, at least at the university library”.
To examine the creation of a feminist museum in France, one must look at the emergence of the country’s feminist movement. The active and dynamic nature of the feminist struggle is at odds with the space devoted to it in museums. While the context has been favourable for the institutionalisation of feminist history as an academic discipline, feminist history is still not represented in any physical cultural institution. This absence demonstrates the continued invisibilisation of the feminist struggle, but it is interesting to see that some countries have turned to women’s museums to challenge that trend, raising the question of whether feminism should be integrated into a museum or whether a museum should be created dedicated to feminism. In France, this question is the subject of much debate, with most feminists seeming to favour the first choice, being somewhat suspicious of creating a “women’s” museum that might convey an essentialist message.
However, the Museum of Feminisms project seems to respond to a need highlighted in an article in the newspaper Le Monde. Why is a museum of feminisms desirable? The current state of feminist archives shows us that these places are difficult and slow to create, as evidenced by the long road that led to the Museum of Feminisms, and also suggests that it is easier to make these spaces disappear than to create them, as evidenced by the different positions taken in favour of reducing the volume of archives (Did You Say “Essential Archives”? 2017) and the moving of feminist libraries (Archives du Féminisme, 2017).
This article comes at a fairly advanced stage in the development of the Museum of Feminisms. The multiple committees (operational committee, co-steering committee, acquisitions and donations committee and scientific advisory committee) created within the University of Angers and AFéMuse are very active, the public announcement has been made, and the renovations of the university library that will house the museum are imminent (although the opening was recently postponed from 2027 to 2030). That said, the optimism of those involved is relative, and the fears of some will only be allayed when those who have committed themselves to the project actually support the museum’s only chance of seeing the light of day, by providing the financial resources the project needs. There is no real support from the government without the funding to back it up.
Note: This ICOM Voices article is an edited version of an excerpt from my second-year Master’s degree thesis in Museums and New Media at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, with a specialisation in the management of cultural projects and organisations (2024-2025), entitled “Un musée à soi ? De l’absence d’un musée féministe en France”, available here.
Editor’s note:
References
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[1] Julie Botte published an article entitled “The National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Museum of Women: Preserving Women’s Heritage and Empowering Women” in the “Museums & Gender” issue of Museum International. Her article is available here. ICOM members can access it free of charge through the Member Space.
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