Women in museums: An interdisciplinary approach to the history of the first female administrators in European cultural institutions

Abstract

The European Commission is currently making efforts to address the persistent gender inequality in the decision-making roles of museums and cultural heritage institutions. This research project – presented in June 2022 at the Summer School in Digital Humanities organised by the Department of Human Sciences at the Universita degli Studi dell’Aquila – explores the extent to which this ‘glass ceiling’ in the sector may be linked with the historical, twentieth-century gender-biased development of the curatorial profession. The project’s research methodology combines archival research and digital humanities with semi-structured interviews and statistical analysis, in order to uncover the circumstances in which women started accessing the curatorial profession in Europe, and to unearth the significance of twentieth-century female curatorial work.