Hidden histories of the museum
Women transforming art collections
Tickets
| Standard: | £20 |
| Concessions: | £12 |
| Members: | £12 |
Please book a ticket to attend this conference, which takes place in the Sainsbury Wing Lecture Theatre (access through the Sainsbury Wing entrance).
If you would prefer to watch the livestream of the conference, please book tickets here.
Bookings close one hour before the event.
Concessions are for full-time students, jobseekers, and disabled adults.
Concessions are for full-time students, jobseekers, and disabled adults.
About
This conference explores the multifaceted roles women have played in shaping museums, both nationally within the UK and internationally, particularly institutions that specialise in historic art. We examine how women have entered museum spaces as visitors, workers, benefactors, patrons, collectors, trustees, curators and photographers. These contributions, although often shaped by existing institutional and societal structures, have changed museum cultures in subtle and significant ways, sometimes by challenging established norms, and at other times by working within them to expand what museums could be and do.
Centred on the idea of ‘hidden histories’, the conference asks how women’s work in, with and around museums has been recorded – or overlooked – within dominant narratives of art and institutional history. What forms of labour have gone unrecognised? What social and economic conditions enabled certain women’s participation, and what connections, whether familial, financial or colonial, made that participation possible? And how might uncovering these histories shift our understanding of museums themselves: not simply as neutral repositories of art, but as cultural systems shaped by gender, power and care? The day’s papers explore how women’s contributions have been remembered, marginalised or erased, and how attending to these complexities can reframe our understanding of both museum history and art history today.
'Hidden histories of the museum' forms part of the programme for the National Gallery’s Women and the Arts Forum, generously supported by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona in honour of her mother, Stacia Apostolos. It is presented in collaboration with the Subject Specialist Network: European Paintings pre-1900 (SSN).
Speakers
Speakers at the conference include:
- Laia Anguix-Vilches (Utrecht University)
- Caroline Babington (Independent Researcher)
- Meaghan Clarke (University of Sussex)
- Carlo Corsato (National Gallery)
- Hannah Cusworth (Royal Museums Greenwich / UCL, University of London)
- Gabriella de la Rosa (National Trust / Sulgrave Manor)
- Bram Donders (Royal Collections, The Hague / Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
- Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam)
- Cara Gathern (UK Parliament Heritage Collections)
- Kate Hill (University of Lincoln)
- Richard Johns (University of York)
- Theresa Kutasz Christensen (The Pennsylvania State University)
- Erika Lederman (V&A)
- Isobel Muir (Tate Britain)
- Emma Roodhouse (Tate Britain)
- Logan Sisley (Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin)
- Alice Strickland (National Trust)
- Eva van Bladel (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam)
A full conference programme will soon be added to this page.
Supported by
The Women and the Arts Conference is generously supported by the Diane Apostolos-Cappadona Trust in honour of Stacia Apostolos.