Addressing sexual violence and feminicides in museums

The role of museums in addressing different forms of conflict and violence is a growing concern. In this essay we bring the language not just of violence but of gender and sex-based violence into the analysis of museum content. We have adopted conceptual frameworks provided by feminist activism as well as legal and social studies, including the vocabulary of sexual violence and feminicide, in order to bring visibility to the relationships that structure museum collections and displays with the politics of gender, violence and feminicide. We also test the use of these concepts in a way that attends to their specific and local significance in examples of museum practice. We explore examples including the Jack the Ripper Museum in London England; the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum in Seoul, South Korea; and artist Jaime Black-Morsette’s REDress project (2010-ongoing) which has been exhibited in national museums in Canada and the United States. The conclusion considers the importance of museums as a platform for the recognition of struggles against sexual violence and feminicides, even as they remain fundamentally tied to patriarchal structures.