Women and Museums, 1850–1914

This is the first attempt to recover the entirety of women's contribution to British museums in the period 1850-1914. It sheds light on women as museum workers, donors and visitors, demonstrates that through such roles women profoundly influenced the development of museums in the period and suggests that museums were a key site for the development of modern gendered identities.

The book uses the concept of the distributed museum to recover the significant contribution made by women not just in obvious roles as museum workers, but also through donating and selling to museums, by visiting them and by acting as patrons. It suggests that women persistently acted to domesticate the museum, by importing domestic objects and domestic regimes of value, as well as by making museums more welcoming to children and even by stressing the importance of housekeeping at the museum. At the same time, women sought 'masculine' careers in science and curatorship but found such aspirations hard to achieve; their contribution tended to be kept within clear, feminised areas.

The book will be of interest to those working on gender, culture, or museums in the period, for the light it sheds on women's material culture and material strategies, education and professional careers, and leisure practices. It will form an important historical context for those working in contemporary museum studies.