Women’s Display: Female Architects and Designers Planning Exhibitions

This issue brings together contributions that document the work of women architects in the field of exhibitions from different perspectives. Exhibits are examined in their role as career-enhancing strategy, as in the case of Chloethiel Woodard Smith, in their efficiency as a politi-cal instrument, proved by the Duch Women Advisory Committee’s (VAC) campaign to im-prove the quality of social housing, and also as teaching opportunities to educate audiences about contemporary living and furnishing forms, a major goal of the Swiss exhibition on women’s work of 1958. Also, the innovative achievements of the protagonists of modern exhibition architecture are illuminated from different standpoints, such as those of Lilly Reich and her substantial contribution to the Barcelona pavilion and the open floor space concept, as well as that of Lina Bo Bardi’s highly socio-political, revolutionary approach to the basic idea of exhibit and communication with the audience. Exhibitions are also presented that formu-late a feminist discourse using the means of vivid display as an outreaching medial tool, so the Danish show På vej (‘moving forward’) presented in Copenhagen 1980 by two groups of women architects and the conceptual, commemorative exhibit at the Basel Architecture Mu-seum in 1989, resulting from the close cooperation of three women architects of different generations.