In 2014, my colleagues at the Cairo-based Women and Memory Forum (WMF) and I decided to establish a women’s museum in Egypt. I was motivated by two things. The first was the absence of feminist narratives in museums in Egypt and across the Arab region. While Egypt hosts more than seventy museums, not a single one is dedicated to women’s history and only a handful of these museums are specialized biographical museums on famous women figures. The second was the expanding collections of archives and objects of material culture housed at WMF.
Continue reading ‘Doing Well, Don’t Worry’: Exhibiting Archives as a Feminist PracticeAuthor: Maissan Hassan
She is a researcher and exhibition-maker interested in feminism, archives and memory work, and a member of the Cairo-based Women and Memory Forum and of the International Association of Women’s Museums. She is the co-author of the Arabic photo-book بناء ونضال: من أرشيف الحركة النسوية المصرية [Building and Struggle: From the Archives of the Egyptian Feminist Movement] (Cairo: WMF, 2018). She holds a B.A. in Sociology (minor in Film) from the American University in Cairo, and a Master’s degree in Arts and Culture (Museums and Collections) from Leiden University. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture at the University of Amsterdam.