İstanbul Kadın Müzesi

Which Future Will you Leave Me? - Girls on The Climate Crisis
Visit the physical exhibition .
October 2020

The imminent climate crisis has brought us to the brink of an abyss. It is everyone's responsibility to demand climate justice for the future of the ecosystem! Companies that pollute the enviroment and contribute to the climate crisis should be held responsible. Climate justice now!

Which Future Will you Leave Me? - Girls on The Climate Crisis Visit the open air exhibition.
For more information: istanbul.kadin.muzesi.info@gmail.com

The exhibition "Encounters in Istanbul - Women's Lives Through the Ages" is a joint cross-cultural project of Women's Museum Istanbul and the Austrian Cultural Forum Istanbul.

The exhibition "Encounters in Istanbul - Women's Lives Through the Ages" is a joint cross-cultural project of Women's Museum Istanbul and the Austrian Cultural Forum Istanbul.

October 2018

Museums and memory sites play a key role in shaping and transforming collective memory, as well as in accessible knowledge production on collective pasts and presents. Yet, despite the critical knowledge production on gender, sexuality and memory in the past decades and the development of feminist pedagogy, many museums and memory sites remain uncritical of conventional gender roles, contributing to the further reproduction of gender based norms and inequalities.

The conference organized by Women's Museum Istanbul and Sabancı University Gender and Women's Studies Center of Excellence (SU Gender) took place in Istanbul from 18 through 20 October 2018. At the conference we discussed feminist pedagogical approaches developed in museums and memorials as well as various practices of social memory with researchers, museum administrators, educators and civil society workers working in the field of social memory.
Please click here for the program booklet

The conference Feminist Pedagogy: Museums, Memory Sites, Practices of Remembrance was accompanied by an exhibition under the title " UnEXPOSED? - Remembering violent history without showing violence"- The exhibition gave concrete examples of practices of remembrance and exemplified feminist museum education. We asked women and gender-oriented museums from different countries to contribute photos and texts from their previous exhibitions featuring the question of how to remember violent history without reproducing images of violence. It is a special challenge to report on people's painful experiences. The examples sent in by the museums demonstrate how to speak about hurting memories with respect, empathy and solidarity. Six women's museums from Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Norway and the Global Fond for Women from the USA sent in 13 documents remembering violence, destruction of nature, times of oppression, mass murder and enforced disappearance and structural violence against asylum seekers.

January 2018

December 2017

SEE IMPRESSIONS OF SOME EVENTS OF WOMEN'S MUSEUM ISTANBUL FROM 2012 to 2017.

25 September 2012

When, in January 2011, we began with the project "Women's Museum Istanbul" - Istanbul Kadin Müzesi ® (IKM) - it all seemed rather like a dream. However, we were always convinced that it was a dream that had the potential of realisation.

In June 2011, with a small group of volunteers, we then started to create the Women's Museum website. As time went on numerous more supporters joined us, both in Turkey itself and from many other countries in the world, so that the website could be launched in the Autumn of 2012. So the first step in realising our dream of a Women's Museum in Istanbul has been completed.

This website, that you are looking at now, could never have come about without the voluntary support and help in the areas listed below. We owe our thanks to

• the sponsor of our website, BENETTON Turkey, for their generous financial support towards the realisation our website.
• our graphic artist Alex Miskin (Odessa, Ukraine), who thought: "for your project the only possible font to use is the one designed by a woman graphic artist and named after a forgotten woman type-setter". Thus he designed the logo of the Women's Museum using the font Mrs Eaves designed by the American typographer Zuzana Licko.
• the managers of the agency madebycat® Özkan Yurdusev and Begüm Eser, and also Aysenur Kurt, who co-ordinated the project. In the course of the work on creating the website our relationship grew way beyond that of client and service-provider, thanks to their ever-increasing familiarity with our project.
• our numerous voluntary translators all over the world. Whether it was a public holiday, the weekend or late into the night, they sat and translated the Turkish texts into English, Italian and German for our website, without expecting any remuneration. They supported our project, because they all find the idea of founding a Women´s Museum in Istanbul very important.
• our voluntary proof-readers all over the world, native speakers who meticulously read through and where necessary corrected the English, Italian and German texts.
• our supporters world-wide who helped us to win over these voluntary translators from different countries for our project.
• our old and new friends and helpers world-wide who have made information, documents and pictorial sources from their private archives available for use on our website and all the others who have given us valuable help for our research.

We owe you all unreserved thanks for your active involvement and valuable contributions towards the project Istanbul Kadin Müzesi® (IKM). You have accompanied us along our path, have given our project group strength through your presence and energy. And supported us in our first concrete steps towards the realisation of the Women's Museum Istanbul project.

Women's Cultural Foundation Istanbul