Feminist Curatorial Interventions in Museums and Organizational Change: Transforming the Museum from a Feminist Perspective

This thesis examines the relationship between feminist curatorship and art institutions and explores how feminism challenges and problematizes the museum. This thesis also examines the challenges in changing the structure of institutions: art organizations often respond with resistance to feminism, containing and ghettoizing feminist artists and artworks. This research project proposes that the aim of feminist curatorship is to change institutions, and their structures and hierarchies in a fundamental way. However, feminism’s objective of reorganizing the museum on a structural level has not been sufficiently discussed in feminist scholarship; feminist scholars have not been involved in a critique of art institutions or a theoretical analysis of the museum. On the contrary, feminist scholarship has focused on the criticism of institutions for the underrepresentation of women artists, on the production and display of women’s or feminist work and on adding more women artists to the museum. Thus, in this thesis I propose a redefinition of feminist curatorial practices as a broad strategy and an intervention whose objective is the museum’s reform. I propose that feminist curatorship should not simply focus on installing feminist art and curating feminist exhibitions but rather should aim at dismantling museological authority, destabilizing power structures and challenging patriarchy and hierarchy.