Gendering Material Objects in Heritage Practice

This chapter brings a material focus to the diversification of gendered representation in heritage practice, drawing on research as part of an AHRC-funded project ‘Gendered Interpretations of the Victoria and Albert (V&A) and Vasa Museums’, which developed a methodology for gendering museum objects through an object biography/prosopography approach. The chapter situates this materially focused perspective on gender and heritage in the existing field of academic and curatorial approaches to developing the representation of women and trans people in museums, emphasising the developing consensus on the need to integrate a pluralist approach to gender into existing permanent exhibitions and changing future collecting practices, arguing that new gendered interpretations of objects are central to this process. Second, it discusses the process of co-production by which the gendered interpretative framework was applied to a series of objects at the V&A, and was sustainably embedded sustainably into several aspects of heritage practice at this beacon institution, including curation, cataloguing, and public/education programmes. A focus on medieval and early modern objects with global origins provided a means of telling new gendered stories about objects from periods which often particularly lack diverse gendered representation. Finally, it considers the transferable and international potential of this gendered approach to material objects through working with the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.