The question of what does it mean for a museum to be a welcoming space for everyone is pretty wide and can be answered in many ways. In the past years, however, institutions are being challenged to rethink one of the most basic uses of public space – public restrooms. Everybody recognises these two anonymous […]
Famous gay men rediscovered?
Last week a painting by Rubens was rediscovered. The subject of this portrait was one of ‘the “most famous gay men in history”’, as the Independent titled their article about the subject. Having just read Joshua’s Adairs ‘House museums or walk-in closets? The (non) representation of gay men in the museums they called home’ I […]
Women in the Dutch canon
Today, it’s been 100 years since Dutch women gained the right to vote. A simple constitutional amendment, since the only word that had to be replaced was ‘men’. Yet, gaining this right was way less self-evident. For this reason, Eddy Habben Jansen, director of ProDemos, the foundation that exhibits the important document, asked himself why […]
Anti-labeling-campaign gone bad
‘Oh my god, are they really kissing?!’ my roommate was pointing at her phone whilst excitingly dangling the image in front of my eyes. I recognized two famous Dutch vloggers, Monica Geuze and Anna Nooshin, who were intimately posing on the cover of the magazine LINDA.meiden (a magazine for teenage girls). Only a few minutes […]
Just a golf ball?
To research the history of immigrants Erica Rand studies sexuality on Ellis Island, the gateway for many immigrants into the US. Rand studies sexuality, because the values about sex in our society influenced the history of immigration and immigrants. I think this is a very interesting approach, but in this blog I want to discuss […]
Subjects, Objects, Resistance – Feminism and Museums
“Feminism and Museums” – a complicated subject, I thought. So I did what most people do when facing something unknown – I googled it. The first entry was, however, not the comforting Wikipedia page I had hoped for, but a call for papers for an academic book about the subject – more people trying to […]
Internet as the new campfire to share stories around
More than twenty years ago I visited Ellis Island with the Dutch Museum Association. This visit made a huge impression on me, because it was the first time that I experienced oral history in such an intrusive manner. In the exhibition there were shots of interviews with survivors of the Holocaust. The orality […]
New Possibilities, Old Issues
“The Deep Dark Secret of oral history is that nobody spends much time listening to or watching recorded and collected interview document”– Michael Frisch With this quote, Michael Frisch captures the main issue of oral history; a problem which Steven High highlights in his article Public History. Telling Stories: A Reflection on Oral History and […]
Sine nobilitate: the lack of enthusiasm for historical games
Perhaps it is because of what I studied. It is hard, for most people, to find common ground in studying Latin syntax, or in trying to memorize names of ancient kings like ‘Suppiluliuma’. It can get a bit lonely at times, being an ancient historian. So imagine my excitement about meeting people who could relate […]
A day in the past?
Democratizing history by popular history Historians have positioned themselves as gatekeepers to the past in a world were more and more popular outings of history are being established. Popular media such as television would not be able to convey the complexity of history and the production and interpretation of history should therefore be controlled by […]