During Spring and early Summer 2019 there has been a lot of networking and publicity for women’s museums and our International Association of Women’s Museums going on in Norway.
We started off in April with an article about the Norwegian Women’s museum and our international network of women’s museums in the National magazine of the Soroptimists International Norway. Next thing to happen was an article about our Norwegian Women’s Museum and the IAWM collaboration in the SCAN magazine in May, meaning that all passengers on SAS flights on routes all over Northern Europe could read about us in the flight magazine! There was information about our IAWM web page as well. There will, as a following up, be a whole page advertisement about the Women’s Museum in Norway in the July issue of Scan Magazine, and this will also include the web address of IAWM.
Advertisement about the Women’s Museum in Norway in the July issue of Scan Magazine
In Mid-June, IAWM President and academic director of the Women’s Museum in Norway, Mona Holm, participated in a panel speech on the topic “Does Oslo need a women’s museum?” together with Lina Thomsgård, director of the newly opened Women’s History Museum in Stockholm, and moderated by director of KILDEN, the Norwegian communication centre for gender research, Linda Rustad.
Mona Holm, IAWM President and academic director of the Women’s Museum in Norway
The event took place at the Norwegian Technical Museum and there were representatives of several important institutions present. Mona Holm presented how the Women’s Museum in Norway was created and opened in Kongsvinger in 1995, and various experiences from its almost 25 years’ history. She then presented the International Association of Women’s Museums and the Norwegian Museum Network for Women’s History, which is led by the Women’s Museum in Norway. Her advice was that a new Oslo initiative should be done in collaboration with the Oslo member museums of the Norwegian Museum Network for Women’s History, since they have already worked with these issues during a long period. She expressed her delight about the increasing interest in women’s history these days and pointed out the how this brings hope for a more gender equal understanding of history and culture. Both the Norwegian Women’s Museum in Kongsvinger and the new Women’s History Museum in Stockholm expressed their support to the idea about a possible women’s museum in Oslo, and said they would love to be active collaborators both as individual institutions and through our networks, the International Association of Women’s Museums and the Norwegian Museum Network for Women’s History.
Logo for the new Kvinnohistoriska Museum Stockholm
Last, but not least, the Norwegian museum magazine, “Museumsnytt”, has made a portrait interview with Mona Holm, IAWM president and academic director of the Women’s Museum Norway, in its new series “My Purpose”. She got the opportunity to tell about why she thinks women’s museums are important and what they do and why we organised our international network and organisation IAWM. The article will be on three whole pages with photographs from the Norwegian Women’s Museum and will be read by the majority of museum professionals in Norway.