Unearthing a hidden curriculum of gendered museum languages through critical feminist visual discourse analysis

ABSTRACT

This article explores the hidden gendered curriculum concealed in the texts, exhibitions and other structural devices of museums and what they teach visitors to see and think. Grounded in conceptualisations of culture, representation, and language, past feminist studies of museums and applying feminist visual discourse analysis (FVDA) we found hiding in plain sight in public museums in Canada and England a diversity of ‘languages’ that subversively aggrandised masculine power and privilege and (re)inscribed negative or limited understandings to women which we argue as feminist adult educators have epistemic, identity and agency consequences. We also argue that whilst museums are trying to address often centuries old exclusionary gendered practices progress is slow because these practices are so embedded and unconscious and reflect pervasive social notions of ‘common sense’. Our study makes an important contribution to feminist museum studies by rendering visible a web of complex structural and textual gendered biases and to adult education. By adding museums to our curricula we can provide our students with a visual and immersive way to hone the critical visual literacy skills needed to understand more fully how both seen and unseen languages operate not just in the museum, but across society.

KEYWORDS:

• Public museums
• gender
• hidden curriculum
• visuals and narratives
• common senses

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Like other feminist adult educators, we use the term ‘women’ in this article as a political category of analysis (e.g. Walters & Von Kotze, 2021). We recognise within this category the existence of intersectionalities of race, ethnicity, sexuality, class and so forth. However, it is critical to understand that while there exist more stories and images of white women in art and history museums ‘woman’ as a category is systematically excluded, objectified and/or mispresented and therefore lacks agency.

2. Science and nature museums have hands-on activities for children, but this is seldom found done in art and history museums. We are advocating for visitors to touch displays and artefacts. Our point is these divisive tools are devices of control.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.