Each year, to celebrate Women’s History Month, the RHSV offers our Women’s History lecture, part of our Distinguished Lecture series.

Museums in the 1970s were largely masculine preserves, staffed almost exclusively by men in white coats. Women were thin on the ground. Their stories were equally rare. Those few women who did appear in museum exhibitions were mostly royal women, or in the Australian context, governors’ wives. But as feminist historians recast the discipline, museums followed in their wake. From feminists to felons, matriarchs to monsters, women’s stories began to be presented in exhibitions. This lecture explores some of the challenges encountered in exhibiting women’s history, especially where the stories themselves might be described as ‘difficult history’. Are there ‘no-go’ areas in history exhibitions, and what happens if we challenge them?

Margaret Anderson is a public historian and museum administrator who is director of the Old Treasury Building. Before taking up this position she was CEO of the History Trust of South Australia. In a long career she held senior museum posts in Western Australia and South Australia and in the 1980s was foundation director of the Migration Museum in Adelaide. In between she taught history and material culture studies at Monash University.

Margaret is a feminist historian with research interests in women’s history, the history of the family, and material history. She is especially interested in debates about conflicted views of the past and the capacity of museums to present inclusive content, including ‘difficult histories’.

House-keeping

The Zoom log-in details will be sent, 24 hours before the event, to all those who have booked – please check your Spam or Junk Mail folder if you cannot find the email in your in-box. The Zoom event will start at 6pm (30 mins later than the in-person event).

As will all RHSV lectures, we will serve refreshments from 5:30pm until 6pm when the lecture will commence.