In June I re-visited one of my favourite museums in Scotland; The Tenement House in the West End of Glasgow. The museum was the home of Miss. Agnes Toward (and her mother) from 1911 until 1965 when she entered long-time hospital care before dying in 1972. The Tenement House was sold to the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) in the early 1980s and is a microcosm of one woman’s lifetime experiences from the early to mid-twentieth century.
On Monday (10th June to be exact) I participated in a #MuseumHour discussion Twitter about freelancing in the museum world. Museum professionals across Twitter discussed how and why they became a freelancer whilst others (myself included) tuned in to obtain information on how to get that first elusive contract as a freelancer whilst also maintaining a happy work-life balance.
Gerda and Eina Wegener with Gerda’s painting Sur la route d’Anacapri, 1924, Royal Library, Denmark.
Gerda Wegener. Never heard of her? Nope, never have I until I listened to this podcast by fashion history podcasters Dressed on the illustrious career of illustrator Gerda Wegener (pronounced with a ‘V’) in the early twentieth-century. Gerda drew illustrations using the ‘pochor’ technique of painting for Le Journal Des Dames et Des Modes as well as working as a successful painter and commercial artist for various companies in France and Denmark. However, her name may be familiar to you as she is played by Alicia Vikander in the 2015 film The Danish Girl which centres on the story of Einar Wegener / Lili Elbe who was the one of first persons to undergo gender re-assignments in the early 1930s in Dresden, Germany.
As a ‘Women Curator’ or just simply a ‘Curator’ (I abhor when people put ‘Women’ or ‘Female’ in front of Historian or Curator; why not just the one word? My gender does not determine my ability to curate exhibitions or dessiminate history!) I found this article that was Tweeted by Amgueddfa Library (Library of the National Museum of Wales) interesting as it details information about the first woman, Joan Beauchamp Procter, a Zoologist, to be appointed as a Curator of the Reptile Department at the National History Museum in London.
Today marks the 100th anniversary that some women and all men over twenty-one gained the right to vote for the first time. ‘The Representation of the People Act 1918,’ was the act of parliament that issued a new era of women’s rights. Though it wasn’t until 1928 that every woman over twenty-one got the vote. With this in mind I wanted a diary for 2018 that commemorates the struggle for the right to vote by women.