Women’s Museums at Home: Frauenmuseum Bonn, Germany

Apr 6, 2020

In times when many museums worldwide are forced to keep their doors shut, we invite you to engage with exhibitions and collections of women’s museums virtually. On this blog we will share with you online exhibitions or virtual views into our member museums worldwide.

Today we invite you to take a look at this great exhibition by Frauenmuseum Bonn in Germany:

On the occasion of Beethoven’s 250th birthday the Frauenmuseum Bonn opened the exhibition “Eleonore, Emilie, Elise”. In the historical part, the everyday life of Bonn women at the end of the 18th century is depicted. Since women were clearly in the majority in Beethoven’s time, they shaped life in Bonn at least as much as men. We introduce a few Bonn women as examples – such as Maria Magdalena van Beethoven, the composer’s mother – and discuss how women lived as nobles, as wives of the new educated middle-classes, as wives working in the crafts, as simple workers or as beggars.

In the artistic part of the exhibition, female artists devote themselves to music in images, installations or sound. They honour the great master, deal with music in general, express their own musical experiences and introduce contemporary female composers. In addition, important women composers of Beethoven’s time will be remembered, such as Maria Theresia Paradis (Vienna) or Emilie Mayer (Stralsund/Berlin), who are unjustly little known.

Heide Pawelzik: Verbot Geige zu spielen

Gisela Weimann: Garten der Komponistinnen

Latest News

Collections 2030 and Beyond – ICCROM Online Conference

Join us online for the conference Collections 2030 and Beyond, organized by ICCROM, from 22–26 September 2025. On 22 September, Gaby Franger, Chair of IAWM, and Tijana Jakovljević Šević, Executive Coordinator of IAWM, will give a short presentation during the “People”...

read more

Webinar for General Assembly

Webinar for General Assembly In preparation for our General Assembly in August 2025, we warmly invite you to a 90-minute online seminar to present and discuss amendments to the IAWM Statutes. Given the limited time and the extensive agenda of the upcoming General...

read more

2025 IAWM Pre-Conference Workshop

Cartographies of interruption and influence: Feminist educational and institutional strategies in museums in response to gender-based violence When: August 24-27 Despite decades of activism, the United Nations (UN) notes that gender-based violence remains staggeringly...

read more

IAWM Conference- Call for Posters

CFP- The Diversity of Women's and Gender Museums Worldwide Proposed exhibition at the Women's Museum Meran Opening: August 2025 Call for posters: The Women's Museum Meran is offering the opportunity to members of the IAWM to contribute to a poster exhibition on the...

read more
Share This