Museums and gender: a pending subject

Abstract

This article tries to approach the representative reality of women both in the history of art and in the setting of museum institutions, from a gender perspective. We will embark on a journey through history, wandering through the core that structures the cultural sphere, observing the foundations of the androcentric discourse that prevails, even today, in how museums show themselves. We will go through the history of art, contemplating the multiple and diverse representations that the female figure has had throughout history, as well as the creative artist, who has shaped the image of women according to his criteria, imposing stereotypes and roles that have been repeated over the centuries. We will go through the theories from a critical position in feminist terms, to discover the absence of artists in art and in the context of cultural institutions. We will review the actions and new perspectives that have been proposed over the last few years, to question the absence of female figures as active and creative subjects, in order to achieve the inclusion of women in the artistic and cultural sphere and also, to create new cognitive maps from the equality of opportunities and the recovery of the memory of the artists, that have been made invisible in our history.