Why Girl Museum?

History can be broken down into endless material and esoteric categories that when labeled and displayed can yield both vital and useless information. As a result, there are thousands of museums in the world dedicated to themes from torture to lunchboxes. Out of this vast range of objects and data, Girl Museum dedicates its purpose to the valuable and overlooked topic of ‘girlhood’.  There are many children’s museums, yet few look at childhood itself as the subject. 

Women’s museums are also becoming more prevalent. While they often include girls, Girl Museum specifically focuses on them. Taxonomically, girlhood is a subset of both child and womanhood. However, we want to examine this universally experienced yet highly individualized state of being as a freestanding idea worthy of its own platform.

Defining Our Terms

‘Defining Our Terms’ is Girl Museum’s first exhibition to showcase what we are about, our point of view and what topics we will explore further in the future via our four exhibition streams: Girlhood in Art, Art of Girlhood, Girls in the World, and GirlSpeak. Throughout the vast history of art, children often were not depicted, and girls even less so. Yet they can be found in painting, sculpture, photography and drawing in most cultures, most prolifically after the mid 19th century.  Before the Renaissance, most likely they were represented only in death. 

Girls who were not of a wealthy, titled background were also unlikely to have their likeness recorded.  This absence of representation makes understanding what girl’s lives were like even more difficult. From the marginalized place of the girl, our exhibitions are sites to examine the images that do exist and how these representations coalesce on the body and mind of the girl, young and old.  Whether a specific personality, a body of projected neuroses, an allegory, a symbol or an esoteric ideal, we acknowledge her presence as both necessary and important.