MUMA Museo de Mujeres Artistas Mexicanas

Self-portrait

The Women’s Museum is an independent, non-profit project undertaken by Lucero Gonzalez after she received an award from the “Mexican Women’s Rights Society Seeds,” for her work and leadership skills in creating Seeds. This feminist fund is designed to finance women’s projects to achieve social change from a human rights perspective.

Mission: to pay tribute to Mexican Women in Visual Art from the 20th century onwards.

Vision: to expand the horizon of the various expressions of Mexican women artists, and promote reflection and dialogue on art, thereby building bridges with initiatives in other parts of the world.

Principles: to acknowledge the value of these artists and their contribution to constructing cultural diversity, and encourage respect towards all persons, free of discrimination related to age, religion, sexual preference, race or social class.

(http://www.museodemujeres.com/en/our-museum)

Description

The Museum of Mexican Women Artists (MUMA, in Spanish) is a project dedicating to building a memory of 20th century women artists in Mexico. The initiative’s intent is to acknowledge the work and career of women in contemporary art, as well as to study and analyze how art practices have been reshaped from a gender perspective.

This virtual museum started in 2008 with artist Lucero Gonzalez after she received an award for her proposal from Semilla Mexican Women’s Rights Association. From then on, the project has developed in collaboration with a diverse group of people and institutions, led by an advisory council comprised of art, science, and history experts, art critics, curators and journalists. The council’s job is to define, sort and present a work’s meanings in an effort to provide a much needed space for empathy, analysis, study, discussion and inspiration, in opposition to the historical lack of resources for feminist readings in art.

The museum’s program presents online activities and exhibits on subjects such as the body, nature, identity, city landscapes, technology, politics, violence, immigration, gender, feminism, diverse family structures, activism and resistance, all explored through different techniques, like illustration, photography, performance, intervention, sculpture, design and textile, to name a few. The gallery starts with an exhibit curated by Inez Sáenz on female portraits, collecting pieces by 12 Mexican artists constantly working on self-portraits throughout their career.

The project also includes a virtual catalogue of writings and artwork sorted alphabetically and by subject. This section includes artwork by visual artists, such as Fabiola Aguilar, Adriana Calatayud and Helen Escobedo; sculptors, such as Angela Gurria and Alejandra Zermeño; painters from different periods, such as Leonora Carrington and Monica Dower; photographers, such as Mariana Yampolski and Yolanda Andrade; performance artists, such as Maria Eugenia Chellet, Maris Bustamante, Mónica Mayer, Katia Tirado, Niña Yared and Lorena Wolfer; video artists, such as Grace Quintanilla, Sarah Minter and Pola Weiss; print, visual anthropology and installation artists, such as Teresa Margolles, Nunik Sauret and Linda Lasky.

2011 saw the launch of a tour around 10 cities in Mexico, titled “Sembrar Una Semilla”. The tour aimed to foster discussion, collaboration and production with different audiences across geographical areas. The project was also linked to the Digital Culture Center with a series of workshops and activities approaching concepts and issues regarding gender roles in society.

MUMA provides public access to a virtual library with essays, specialized texts, books, articles and editorials, as well as links to sites of interest and partner institutes and initiatives in Mexico and abroad. The News section publishes international events, such as exhibits, study and research programs, calls for submissions, book presentations, gatherings, workshops and courses of interest to people collaborating with and browsing the site.

Links

URL: http://www.museodemujeres.com/es/

Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.museodemujeres.com/es/