“The Australian women's movement goes to the museum: The ‘cultures of Australian feminist activism, 1970–1990’ project”

SynopsisIn the increasing academic attention placed on social memory, the popularization of material culture, and the growth of the heritage and museum industries, the modern women's movement finds itself at a strategic juncture. Given the limitations of narratives available to talk about recent feminist history, we are interested in the capacity of feminism's material culture to provide a new set of languages and esthetics through which second wave feminism might be understood. This article reflects on one particular project in which we were commissioned by the National Museum of Australia to produce a dedicated museum collection on Australian second wave feminism. We detail the criteria for selection, classifying themes, objects obtained, and the absences in the collection. We then use the methodology of object biography to interpret two of our objects to demonstrate the possibilities feminist material culture offers as ways of reading feminist activism as well as rendering museums more feminist.