IWD at the Initiative for a Women’s Museum in Victoria, Canada

Mar 9, 2018

Darlene Clover, founder of the initiative for a Women’s Museum in Victoria, Canada visited two exhibitions in Toronto. One was of Christian Dior at the Royal Ontario Museum and the other, “Victims of Fashion” at the Bata Shoe Museum. She created these ‘found poems’ from wording and phrases from the curatorial statements, explanatory panels and labels, which she will read at her talk feminist research and pedagogy at the University of Huddersfield:

 

Ode to the Couturier

The bible has not taught us so much

As this master of shape

This great conductor of form

Who astonished the public

By orchestrating away wartime masculine style

To make women feel like women again

Clothed in the armour

Of a revival of 19th century corsetry

That obscured the natural to accentuate the waist

And enshrine femininity

As the ‘new look’ of peace

 

Ode to the victims

Their worries proved to be well-founded

In the decades long reign

Of notorious female fashion dictates

Cloth dipped in toxic pigments

Testing positive for arsenic

And when brushed against a flame

Set instantly alight the women

Imprisoned in the steel corseted cage

Crafted to make a criminally small waist

And mocked mercilessly by caricaturists

For their female excess and frivolity

 

Latest News

Gender Equality: Un-Gendering Memory And Museum Practices

We are delighted to invite you to the TRACTS workshop of WG2: Traces and Social Justice. Date: September 29-30, 2023 Venue: Slovene Ethnographic Museum, Metelkova ulica 2, 1000 Ljubljana Organizing committee:  Tina Palaić, Slovene Ethnographic Museum Polona Sitar,...

read more

The Congress of Women in Poland

The Congress of Women is behind us (2-3 September) - an event which for 15 years has been the most important place for active Polish women to exchange experiences. Where we can talk openly about our problems, find solutions and support each other. As a reminder -...

read more

Summer at the Women’s Museum Norway

We are currently finishing up an exciting and successful summer season at the Women’s Museum Norway. We are happy to have welcomed a mix of locals, Norwegians from other parts of the country and international visitors to our five exhibitions on local female pioneers...

read more

Anouk Lamm Anouk: post/pre Lesbian Jazz

September 10 to December 3, 2023 Opening: September 10, 2023, 12 p.m. On September 10, 2023, frauen museum wiesbaden opens the doors to post/pre Lesbian Jazz, the first solo museum exhibition by Anouk Lamm Anouk. Encompassing three exhibition levels, this will be the...

read more
Share This