MANSPLAINING THE MUSEUM

She's My Muse | Joanna Wreakes

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Hey Musings, Joanna here! I’m so honoured to be taking over the She’s My Muse column from my colleague Samantha - if you haven’t had a chance to check out what she wrote over the summer I would highly recommend it. I found so much inspiration in her articles, especially 30 Female Artists to Feature in Your Future Museums, where Samantha discusses so many talented women from all around the world!

The author during Nuit Blanche. Photo courtesy of Cher-Ann Chai

I’ll also admit, I was a bit apprehensive taking on such an important column - there are big shoes to fill and I found myself wondering what exactly I would write about. The idea for this article stemmed from a personal experience I had recently and after talking with my friends and colleagues realized it wasn’t so rare.

Have you ever been to Nuit Blanche Toronto? The all-night art festival happens annually here in Toronto with amazing installations across the city. This year I was lucky enough to check out the sites on Sterling Road and near Fort York with a good pal. It was an inspiring evening full of intriguing installations, fellow art lovers, and sardined streetcars in the middle of the night.

The scene of the crime, so to speak, was a work by local artist Shay Salehi. Standing Still (Walking Composition) invited viewers to contemplate what it means to “make progress” or “move forward”.

Standing Still, 2018 from shay salehi (source.)

Upon entering the room to view the work, it was quite crowded. Rather than follow the crowd of people I moved in the opposite direction towards a part of the room where there was space to stand and observe. When I did this, an older man I had never seen before took it upon himself to try and explain that I was going the “wrong way” and if I followed them I would be walking in the same direction of the character depicted in the work. I was taken aback at why this person thought it necessary to explain this to me - my first major incident of mansplaining in the art and museum world.

Mansplaining is a combination of the words “man” and “explain” and the phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the museum world. Women and nonbinary folks have shared their experiences with the term across professional disciplines. This BBC article does a really succinct job of summing mansplaining and includes this handy chart:

Mansplaining explained. Source.

I brought this experience up with friends and colleagues in the Museum Studies, and found that many of them had similar stories, both as museum visitors and professionals. One colleague, a collections assistant in a sports institution, talks about how people doubt her knowledge purely based on her gender.

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A post shared by The Wing (@the.wing) on Oct 11, 2019 at 6:01am PDT

Have any readers had a similar experience? Or realized you were an inadvertent mansplainer? What do you think we can do to combat the issue of mansplaining in the museum (and beyond)?