Girls in Museums 2017

Happy belated International Day of the Girl Child! This holiday, celebrated every year on October 11, focuses on galvanizing worldwide enthusiasm for goals to better girls’ lives, providing an opportunity for girls to show leadership and reach their full potential. Around the world, groups came together to highlight, discuss, and take action to advance the rights and opportunities for girls everywhere.

Here at Girl Museum headquarters, we have long used International Day of the Girl to highlight an issue that many of us find integral to advancing girls’ rights: how girls are represented in museums. Throughout the years, we’ve found that some museums get it right - and others get it painfully wrong. For too long, girls have been the silent subjects of artworks - shown throughout museums yet never present in their own right. Their stories have been sidelined by technical art history or discussions of how the artists portraying them impacted history. Including girls’ voice